WASHINGTON – Older and disabled Americans strongly support proposals to permit prescription drug imports and to allow the government to negotiate prices of medicines, according to a poll released Tuesday.
Both would give Americans access to cheaper prescription drugs, said most of those polled, all Medicare recipients. Four-fifths of those questioned in the Kaiser Family Foundation poll said they support both proposals, dismissing misgivings about the safety of imported drugs.
By contrast, nearly half the people questioned said they have an unfavorable impression of the new prescription drug law passed last year by the Republican-led Congress and signed by President Bush. Among the major complaints: The law does not do enough to bring down prices, is too complicated and rewards drug makers and insurers. Only a quarter of those surveyed said they liked the law.
The criticisms are similar to those put forward by Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry and other opponents of last year’s Medicare overhaul. The poll suggests an election-year advantage for the Democrats on the issue.
The administration says allowing importation of drugs from abroad would be unsafe. It claims government negotiation would in reality mean federally imposed price controls on prescription medicines that would remove drug makers’ incentive to develop new products.
The survey said most people on Medicare find drug discount cards aren’t worth the trouble because they are confusing and insufficiently generous. More than half said they still don’t understand the law well and lack sufficient information to know how they will be affected.
The telephone survey of 1,223 Medicare recipients was conducted by Kaiser, a nonpartisan health policy organization, and the Harvard School of Public Health. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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