Official numbers provided by the agency which oversees Medicare say that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has saved seniors at least $3.4 billion in drug costs since it was signed into law by President Obama.
In the first two years after “Obamacare” was signed, Medicare reforms in the law saved seniors a total of $3.4 billion in prescription drug costs by bridging a coverage gap, according to official figures.
Over 220,000 beneficiaries have saved an average of $837 in the first three months of 2012, the Medicare agency said Monday. That’s on top of $3.2 billion in savings enjoyed by some 5.1 million seniors in 2010 and 2011 thanks to the Affordable Care Act, according to the advisory on the new figures.
The savings were wrung through a combination of discounts on Medicare prescription drugs — 50 percent on brand names, 7 percent on generics — and rebates for seniors who fell under a coverage gap known as the “doughnut hole.”
And according to the Republicans, this is bad news. This is the stuff of socialism. And in 2012, their single biggest campaign platform is the repeal of Obamacare.
The risk for them is that people may decide they kind of like this sinful "European style" socialism their elected leaders keep yammering about.