Take Action to Strip the Outrageous Amendment from Health Care Bill!
I started to celebrate that there might actually be an advancement of a health care bill in Congress until I realized that Speaker Pelosi had allowed the egregious Eshoo/Barton amendment to stay in the House version of the bill. Once again we get verbal support on an issue as important as health care reform but no guts to stand up and really do the right thing for those who need it the most! In the Colorado State House, I carried and passed legislation to allow $4 prescription drugs to be offered for families and the elderly who were struggling to make ends meet. Helping people purchase necessary medications was the right thing to do then, and now the Eshoo/Barton amendment will be denying people an affordable option!
As it stands now, brand name medications have five years of exclucivity on the market before affordable generics can be made available. The Eschoo/Barton amendement would extend that to twelve years of exclusivity. Drug manufactures have done just fine with five years of exclusivity, and an extension to twelve years would only fatten their wallets at the expense of the rest of us.
Read the Huffpo Article, A Death Sentence For My Fellow Breast Cancer Survivors and then take action!
Also check out the Access to Medicines Project website. Read the Joint Statement of Consumer Groups regarding adoption of the Eshoo Barton Amendment. Please join with all of these other deeply concerned groups to write to Congressman Perlmutter and our other Colorado delegation members in asking Speaker Pelosi to do the right thing.
What can you do to stop this amendment?
Email Congressman Ed Perlmutter and ask him to actively work to strip the outrageous, anti-consumer Eshoo/Barton Amendment from the current House version of the Health Care Reform Legislation.
Get informed about the issue, and how it would hurt Colorado families.
Read the Amendment: Eshoo .001
Joint Statement of Consumer Groups Opposed to Industry Backed Eshoo/Barton Amendment
Generic Phrma Assoc Press Release
Daily Kos: Pay or Die
Full Text of the Bill Now Available: http://docs.house.gov/rules/health/111_ahcaa.pdf
