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11:40 AM Phone rings, caller ID says "Political" the number on the screen reads 201-540-5121........I pick up the phone.
The fellow at the other end tells me he's calling on behalf of "America's Pharmaceutical Industry" and that he wants me to tell Senator Menendez to leave Medicare Part D alone.....and that I don't want "the government" changing it. He sounds like he's reading a simple script.......he offers to transfer the call directly to Menendez's office so I can tell the Senator what I'm being told to tell him.
At this point I interrupt the spiel and, after confirming on who's behalf the call is being made, ("America's pharmaceutical industry") I tell the fellow that Medicare Part D is a bad law that was written by the pharmaceutical industry for their own benefit as it doesn't allow the government to negotiate to lower drug prices......the caller immediately thanks me for my time and hangs up.
I tried calling Menendez's DC office a few times but to no avail since the lines were busy (evidently flooded with calls from frightened constituents worried that Menendez might vote to take away their drug coverage). I then called his Newark office to alert them to the fact that they were being flooded with calls from folks who were being manipulated by a misinformation campaign designed to scare the shit out of them.
So, perhaps Menendez will "stick to his guns" and continue to try to reform Medicare Part D so that the prices of drugs purchased in massive quantities with taxpayer monies can actually be NEGOTIATED......but even if he does that, it still doesn't change the fact that large numbers of seniors are being terrified and stampeded into believing that the "government" is trying to shaft them at best and, implicitly, kill them at worst.
This is how the right wing and the medical industrial complex operate. They play on fear. There is a word we use to describe people who use of fear to achieve political ends; such people are called TERRORISTS!!!.
And if you think the term terrorist is too strong to describe "a simple phone call" which was likely part of a "totally legal" "lobbying and public relations" effort........please consider this:
If someone puts a gun to your head and says "do this".......then that's obviously a terroristic threat. Right? And why is that so? Because the victim is put in fear for their lives.
The implicit threat of "government" taking away drug coverage for seniors who couldn't pay for them otherwise IS a threat to people's lives......and IF IT WERE TRUE....the threat would be objectively valid; but since it's a complete fucking LIE......and since it's a lie designed to protect the insanely bloated revenues of "the American pharmaceutical industry"; I say that what we have here is a kind of political/commercial TERRORISM that needs to be exposed and stopped.
Sure, corporations do have the right to "free speech" and sure, under current SCOTUS rulings, money=speech; but no one....not even "the American pharmaceutical industry" has the right to "yell fire in a crowded theater". And that's what these kinds of manipulative tactics do.
This deceptive/manipulative phone call was aimed at conning/terrifying the most vulnerable sector of our population and it's ultimate aim is to scare our political leadership into voting to preserve "the American pharmaceutical industry's" profits.
I urge y'all to call Senator Menendez's offices and to tell him not to be scared by these sick games and to fix Medicare Part D so that we CAN negotiate with "America's pharmaceutical industry" and further, urge him to hold investigative hearings on how we need to change things so that these kinds of deceptive terrifying/abusive phone calls come to an end.
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