Senate Bill sb1180

    Florida Senate - 2003        (NP)                      SM 1180

    By Senator Peaden





    2-1216-03

  1                     Senate Memorial No. ____

  2         A memorial to the Congress of the United

  3         States, urging Congress to enact a Medicare

  4         Prescription Drug Benefit.

  5

  6         WHEREAS, the use of prescription drugs improves the

  7  quality of care and helps patients live healthier, longer, and

  8  more productive lives while keeping them out of more costly

  9  acute care settings in the long term, and

10         WHEREAS, the increased use of new and improved

11  prescription drugs has changed the delivery of health care in

12  the United States since Medicare was enacted, and while

13  two-thirds of the Medicare population has some form of

14  prescription drug coverage, although it many times is

15  inadequate, one-third of Medicare beneficiaries have no

16  coverage at all, and

17         WHEREAS, Congress did not enact a drug benefit in the

18  Medicare program, and therefore the program is inadequate in

19  providing the elderly and disabled the most appropriate drug

20  therapies, preventing the delivery of quality health care at

21  an affordable cost, and

22         WHEREAS, the private sector provides affordable

23  coverage by negotiating discounts on drugs and meeting the

24  needs of special populations with chronic diseases and those

25  with co-morbidities through coordinating care with disease

26  management, drug utilization review, and patient education

27  programs, all of which aid in ameliorating medical errors, and

28         WHEREAS, comprehensive reform of the Medicare program

29  would use the successful tools of the private sector in

30  coordinating care for this population and use the marketplace

31  to foster competition among private plans, resulting in more

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CODING: Words stricken are deletions; words underlined are additions.






    Florida Senate - 2003        (NP)                      SM 1180
    2-1216-03




  1  choices of quality coverage for seniors and the disabled while

  2  maintaining the financial sustainability of the program, and

  3         WHEREAS, Congress's inaction has failed to provide for

  4  comprehensive reform of Medicare, encouraging states to use

  5  their own resources to ease the burden of their elderly and

  6  disabled populations and effectively to assume an unfunded,

  7  informal mandate, and

  8         WHEREAS, in implementing state programs to assist the

  9  Medicare population, state budgetary constraints can often

10  result in requirements to restrict and limit the patient's

11  access to needed prescription drugs, and enact anticompetitive

12  price controls, NOW, THEREFORE,

13

14  Be It Resolved by the Legislature of the State of Florida:

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16         That the Congress of the United States is urged to

17  enact financially sustainable, voluntary, universal, and

18  privately administered out-patient prescription drug coverage

19  as part of the federal Medicare program.

20         BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be

21  dispatched to the President of the United States, to the

22  President of the United States Senate, to the Speaker of the

23  United States House of Representatives, and to each member of

24  the Florida delegation to the United States Congress.

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CODING: Words stricken are deletions; words underlined are additions.