Schumer meets with seniors in Hyde Park

Armed with price comparisons that demonstrated Americans could save hundreds of dollars per year on prescription costs, Schumer told stories of people who had to make a choice of medicine or paying other bills.

Mrs. Pauline Sickler of Kingston told of her need for five days of injections at a cost of $750. “I called my doctor because I thought that’s a lot of money,” she said. The doctor told her, “It’s better than the expenses it would cost if you died,” she conveyed. “It just floored me; but it’s true, if he didn’t give me the injections, I would have died.”

Schumer said seniors without health care plans are between a rock and a hard place. “The basic conundrum we have is with all these advances, it’s become so expensive that the average person cannot afford it,” he said. “We’re not talking about you can’t afford a Cadillac but you can have a Chevy. There’s no Chevy’s here. When you’re dealing with your own health, you want health care and it’s God’s most precious gift to us, it’s life itself, and we should not be in America where we can’t afford it for people.”

Schumer is also pushing for Medicare to cover prescription drugs and for greater availability of less expensive generic drugs.