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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Deane Beebe
Communications Director
212-204-6219
E-mail
Medicare Rights Center

December 30, 2005

Judge Rules that Court Lacks Power to Protect Drug Access for 6.2 Million Impoverished People with Medicare

[New York, NY] - A federal district judge in Manhattan ruled this afternoon that federal courts lack the power to order the continuation of existing drug benefits to people with Medicare who are losing Medicaid drug coverage this weekend. The decision says that people denied medicine must contest that denial, individual by individual, before the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services prior to seeking court protection.

The text of the Court's decision can be found at http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/rulings/05CV09549_opinion_122905.pdf. The plaintiffs, eight consumer organizations from Maine to California, will bring an immediate appeal of that ruling.

Robert M. Hayes, the president of the Medicare Rights Center, one of the plaintiffs in the case, made the following statement:

"Nothing in this ruling suggests that the oldest, poorest and frailest Americans are safe. On January 1st the neediest Americans face potentially catastrophic disruptions in their access to needed medicine. In the real world, people cut off from life sustaining medicine cannot survive the delay of an agency appeal. The responsibility for the health and safety of these frail Americans rests squarely with the Bush Administration."

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