"This Medicare PDP is a boondoggle for BIG GOVERNMENT, drug companies and financially secure seniors. It will not lead to privatization of Medicare."
Why do you feel compelled to embellish in order to make your case?
There are no fewer than 6 Privatization options in this Medicare Reform law. There is private competition all over this Act, and there's even an additional tax cut (you can now use pre-tax dollars for your Medical Savings Accounts) in it.
You can complain about the cost, that's fine, but there is no need to go into hyperbole just because you don't like what has happened.
The *law* specifies more than half a dozen Privatization options. It's law. That's a fact. Get used to it.
I'm embellishing nothing. Your faith in BIG GOVERNMENT isn't held by the vast majority of conservatives or by most Republicans for that matter. This is a political victory for the GOP and will help get PresBush and Republicans re-elected in 2004. But it does nothing to reduce the size of government and is fiscally irresponsible.
Here's what the Heritage Foundation has to say about this $400 billion unfunded government program.
The Medicare prescription drug proposal is bad health policy, exacerbating the flaws in a system that has almost no market-based incentives to improve service and control costs. But the House and Senate bills also will undermine sound tax and economic policy in several ways. Specifically:
The size of government will expand
A new entitlement will take America even faster down the road that has caused so much economic damage in Europe's welfare states. Indeed, the unfunded Medicare expansion is essentially a huge future tax increase since the population of Medicare recipients will nearly double once the baby-boom generation retires. Ironically, just when some European countries are waking up to the problem and restraining unfunded entitlements, America will be creating an enormous new entitlement.
President Bush's recently enacted tax cut and tax reform package will likely be the first casualty
Because of arcane budget rules, the bulk of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire at the end of 2008 and the end of 2010. Extending these tax cuts or making them permanent will be enormously difficult in an environment of skyrocketing spending for government-provided health care. Indeed, the creation of a prescription drug entitlement may be akin to repealing the Bush tax cuts.
By adding to the deficit, the huge new unfunded liability will likely be the death knell of further tax relief and fundamental tax reform
A prescription drug benefit means bigger deficits--a problem that will intensify as the baby boomers start to retire in the next decade. Once these demographic and fiscal variables become part of the budget forecast, lawmakers seeking to cut taxes and create a simple and fair tax code, such as the flat tax, in all probability will face insurmountable political obstacles.
A new entitlement means bigger government, and bigger government means higher taxes, especially when politicians are expanding the welfare state and neglecting much-needed Medicare reform. Simply stated, the prescription drug benefit will make America more like stagnant European nations such as France.