Slick, misleading No on 61 ads are all over the place.

Pretty telling to me that if the biggest of big Pharma are against Prop 61, then it is good to be for Prop 61. Bernie's support just puts an educated exclamation point for me on voting for Prop 61.

crossposted because I'm having trouble supporting this. Can anyone help out with the concerns I have?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017404039

Why don't they extend it to the Medi-cal managed care services?

Will big pharma raise the costs for those not included in the State Agency programs. This only covers state agencies and Medi-cal managed services is exempted from this initiative.

Will big pharma sky-rocket the cost of certain drugs to reap the difference. And won't that affect all of us not covered by state agency plans? Just because people are not in these plans doesn't mean we wouldn't be hurting tremendously by this. If my blood pressure medicine goes past what it is now it would certainly hurt me. I can barely afford my health insurance as it is but I make too much to qualify for subsidies.

Prop 61 does not apply to 88% of californians (those not in the state programs). Do we pick up the tab?

While this may or may not help the state agencies (because this isn't clear based on not being able to actually know what the VA pays) the initiative states it would 'likely' benefit private health plan entities. That is no guarantee.
This is concerning because there is also no guarantee that private health plan 'entities' would try to implement this.

Why did the organization exempt themselves from this initiative they wrote and got on the ballot? The head of the organization that wrote this profits from selling prescription drugs but does't have to comply with this? This is concerning.

There is an argument that it could raise the prices on Vets ....and the rebuttal states it is an empty threat because Federal law requires discounts to vets. The pharma industry could still raise the prices and STILL give a discount. So I don't understand how that is an empty threat since it isn't clear that they can't do that.

I hate to say it but I am leaning NO. They need to come up with a better initiative.

my 2 cents

Just think, with it a minority was able to carve out a majority position and control the country from that place.

Nothing is perfect but having agreement to be doing something is where everything starts. If it's unfair in some jurisdictional way the state supreme court will easily be able to over-rule part or all of it (they have done that before). It is just one reason why they call it a initiative and not written law.