Reply #6: "…Gephardt and Kerry campaigns are more than friendly…" [View All]

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"Aides to both men say there is no overt conspiracy, but they acknowledge that at least at a staff level, the Gephardt and Kerry campaigns are more than friendly: they are sharing information about Dr. Dean that helps fuel each another's attacks.

On Sept. 30, for instance, both campaigns fired off press releases within 18 minutes of each other touting a column in The Boston Globe critical of Dr. Dean.

Shortly before, according to Steve Elmendorf, Mr. Gephardt's chief of staff, he and Jim Jordan, Mr. Kerry's campaign manager, told each other of the column by e-mail. "Either I sent it to Jim, or Jim sent it to me, I can't remember," Mr. Elmendorf said."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/12/politics/campaigns/12CAMP.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=108&topic_id=58255

Dean Campaign Responds to Washington Tag Team
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=108&topic_id=58258

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WOODRUFF: Governor Dean, before you sit down, I've just been handed a document. I think it came out of the press room that Senator Kerry's staff has been distributing some comments about what was said. Among other things they are saying that you, Governor Dean, tried to kick Vermont seniors off their prescription drug plan. That's relevant to what you were just saying here, so do you want to respond to that?

DEAN: Does that go along with the fact that I'm just like Newt Gingrich, too, and I tried to undo Medicare.

That's silly, of course. What I did try to do was get a cigarette tax past the Republican House. They wouldn't pass them. I told them if they didn't pass a cigarette tax to pay for our health care program, then they wouldn't be able to fund seniors' prescriptions.

They passed the cigarette tax, as I knew they would.

WOODRUFF: Senator Kerry, what about that?

KERRY: Well, it's not silly. It's what he did. I mean, it's sad. But he in fact, in order to balance his budget, terminated -- called for the full termination of what was called the V-Script program, and also turned to seniors and made prescription drugs more expensive for them in order to balance the budget.

Now, that's a fact. I didn't raise this, and I didn't know they were saying that, and it's sort of separate from where we were.

What I want to come back to, there are two ways for you to have lower prescription drug costs. One is you could hire Rush Limbaugh's housekeeper…

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

… or you can elect me president of the United States.

(LAUGHTER)

I want you to do the latter, and here's why: The prescription drug companies have not been held accountable. And what they're doing is they're playing games with the patents. They'll take a little jar, they'll change the color, there will be the same thing in it, they extend the patent laws.

So they don't put generics into the marketplace.

The pharmacy benefit managers are charging additional money for rebates, kickbacks, all kinds of schemes, almost 16 billions of extra costs.

What we need is a president who is determined to have a Medicare prescription drug benefit; make bulk purchasing available to the states, so Governor Napolitano and others can purchase in bulk but lower costs out to their citizens; and hold the companies accountable on the patent laws so we can put generics in the marketplace.

WOODRUFF: All right. Senator…

KERRY: If we do that, we can lower the costs for all Americans.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5841-2003Oct9.html