A MEMORIAL

REQUESTING CONGRESS TO ENACT AN ADEQUATE PRESCRIPTION DRUG BENEFIT FOR ALL MEDICARE RECIPIENTS

WHEREAS, the use of prescription drugs improves quality of care and helps patients live healthier, longer and more productive lives while keeping them out of more costly acute care settings in the long term; and

WHEREAS, since medicare was enacted, the increased use of new and improved prescription drugs has changed the delivery of health care in the United States; and

WHEREAS, two-thirds of the medicare population has some form of prescription drug coverage, which remains inadequate, and one-third of medicare beneficiaries have no drug coverage at all; and

WHEREAS, congress has not enacted a drug benefit in the medicare program; and

WHEREAS, comprehensive reform of medicare would use the successful tools of the private sector in coordinating care and use the marketplace to foster competition among private plans, resulting in more choices of quality coverage for seniors and the disabled while maintaining the financial viability of the program; and

WHEREAS, congress has failed to provide for comprehensive reform of medicare, encouraging states to use their own resources to ease the burden of their elderly and disabled populations and, in effect, to assume an unfunded, informal mandate; and

WHEREAS, the congressional budget office and the United States department of health and human services have estimated that there are thousands of medicare recipients in New Mexico who rely on New Mexico's medicaid program for prescription drug benefits and that New Mexico would save eighty-seven million dollars ($87,000,000) in medicaid funds over the period 2005 through 2012 if congress would enact this long-overdue medicare health benefit;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that the United States house of representatives and the United States senate be requested to enact financially sustainable, voluntary and universal prescription drug coverage as part of the federal medicare program; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the United States house of representatives and the United States senate.