AFCM: PILL BILL IS ROTTEN

NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA -- Americans concerned about the cost of their drugs and their own health need to reject the current Medicare reform plan, according to Americans for Free Choice in Medicine.

What the government really needs to expand is not government, but freedom, states Richard E. Ralston, AFCM's executive director, in an op-ed released today. There is one minor feature of the bill that would help seniors pay for their prescriptions: tax-free Health Savings Accounts. But this single feature is not nearly enough to make the legislation palatable.

Ralston ridiculed the conference committee compromise, including congressional Republicans' insistence that the bill enhances patient choice.

So-called competition will be available temporarily in only six cities during a six year test period beginning seven years from now (2010), Ralston points out. Whatever else, that's NOT Capitalism.

Americans for Free Choice in Medicine, (AFCM), founded in 1993, publishes a consumer's guide and tutorial to MSAs on its Web site and it is the nation's only educational organization based on individual rights, personal responsibility and free market ideas in medicine. Visit AFCM's Web site at www.afcm.org