Free Republic

Democratic Candidate John Edwards would be a nonsensical statement, in any leading industrial nation, with a functional public school system. It’s a good thing for him that Playstation Johnnie decided to make his run for the roses here, in the United States. He has proposed a plan to give us all [URL=http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2007-02-04T171930Z_01_N04358318_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-POLITICS-EDWARDS.xml&WTmodLoc=PolNewsHome_C1_%5BFeed%5D-3]health care for Christmas; [/url] free of charge. Provided, of course, you’re not one of The Rich. For them, he sees no choice but to raise their taxes. I mean aw shucks, what’s a poor man of the people supposed to do if he wants to buy $90-$120 Billion...

We know that you know that there is an entitlement problem. But the message hasn't reached Capitol Hill. THERE'S NO great mystery about how to address Medicare's financial crisis. Either you contain the rate at which the program's costs rise, or you raise more money to pay for it. .... The first announcement was that spending on doctors is rising more slowly than in the past. But the announcement assumed that Congress will follow through on its promise to cut Medicare payments to doctors by 5 percent next year. Congress made that promise after two consecutive years of failing to...

President Bush can generally count on the unquestioning support of the very conservative Heritage Foundation. This, however, excludes the debacle surrounding health care policy in general and more specifically, The recently passed Prescription Drug Panderation Act. This ominous money vacuum has even President Bush's strongest ideological supporters scratching their heads and asking a few very pointed questions. Robert E. Moffet, The Heritage Foundation's ranking expert on health care policy, kicked off proceedings with the following cheerful tidbit. "Recently, David Walker, the Comptroller General of the United States, noted that the official debt of the United States is more than $7...

For Rep. Mike Pence, the man who will lead the conservative House Republicans' official caucus in the next Congress, losing his fight last year against the Medicare bill was the legislative equivalent of the Alamo — a gallant stand for the two dozen conservative opponents and one he hopes will become a rallying cry the next time. "We were wiped out. There was nothing victorious about the Medicare bill. They won, we lost, that's how it works," Mr. Pence said of the Nov. 22, 2003, vote for which House Republican leaders needed three hours to corral enough Republican votes to...

<p>President Bush signed a prescription-drug act two months ago that is actually hurting his popularity instead of boosting support from the elderly as intended.</p> <p>A Gallup survey found that public disapproval of Mr. Bush's handling of health care has increased 13 percentage points since last year. The Jan. 19-Feb. 1 survey found 57 percent of the 1,001 Americans surveyed disapprove of Mr. Bush's health care policies, compared to 35 percent of voters who approve.</p>