After firing up crowds yesterday with his vision for restoring trust in our government, Barack’s words in Manchester this morning resonated in a quieter, more personal key.
Barack met with a small group of voters for a roundtable conversation about the broken system in Washington. Sitting around a table at T.R. Brennan’s, the group of 8 spoke passionately about how government just isn’t working for them anymore.
Suzanne from Manchester shared her story about falling into Medicare Part D’s “doughnut hole” – the gulf between the low cap of prescription medication costs covered by Medicare and the high threshold for coverage for catastrophic insurance. She said
I was paying maybe $6 to $28 for my prescriptions and I thought, ‘well great, what is everybody complaining about?’ And one day my husband came home from the pharmacy with two of my prescriptions, and he said, ‘you know this cost over $200.’ I had fallen into the doughnut hole.
Although covered by Medicare Part D from January to August, Suzanne has to pay the full costs for her prescribed medicine from September to December. Ballooning costs have forced Suzanne to make a last resort decision. She takes her most expensive drugs, prescribed for her coronary disease condition, every other day.
Barack described Suzanne’s story as “an example of how Washington fundamentally failed the American people.” As Barack noted, some of the Medicare Part D bill’s key proponents in Congress and the Executive Branch took high-paying lobbyist jobs in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries after leaving government service.
Brookline resident Phil told a similar tale. He must now tap into his retirement savings to pay for his prescription drugs and the numerous back surgeries he’s received due to a degenerative disc disease.
He said, “We’re pretty much getting to the end of the rope in that where we may have to sell our house, our dream house…We didn’t think we were struggling or whatever, we both had really nice jobs.”
After the discussion ended, Phil told me that Barack had inspired him to get involved in politics by volunteering in this election. “I grew up in Washington, DC and have never believed in the system,” he said, “but he’s honest, smart and wants to empower people to change things. I want to be a part of that.”
Next, Barack lit up a packed living room at a house party in Manchester. Worried that regular people are getting squeezed by the vise grip of special interests on our politics, the crowd asked Barack about affordable housing, cuts in education funding and curricula, and federal disaster relief preparedness.
In answering them, Barack displayed his detailed understanding of government. Barack said progress on the issues that matter to working families must start with fixing the system in Washington. Moreover, it would require inspiring a new generation to lend their talents, to see politics as a mission, not a game, and to make “government service cool again.”
Keith, an activist fighting homelessness here in Manchester, said, “Too many two-income families are struggling just to pay the bills, and no one seems to be able to get anything done on their behalf in the current climate in Washington.”
Keith asked Barack about the growing problem of homelessness and said that Barack “is on the right track because he gets in his gut how the broken system hurts average working Americans.”
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