Seniors already have extensive government coverage through the existing Medicare scheme. The new scheme being proposed is mainly about adding NON-seniors to a big new government program. Hundreds of thousands of under-65 deadbeats, drug addicts, alcoholics, etc. who are currently uninsured because they don’t work at jobs that provide coverage (and in many cases never did), and don’t have money to buy insurance (though nobody would be likely to sell them insurance anyway, nor would they willingly spend money on insurance when they’d rather spend it on booze or meth or whatever). THESE will be the primary new entrants into the government insurance plan, and THESE will be the primary source of new prescription medication sales for the pharma companies. The seniors are all already on the various Medicare schemes, and the pharma companies already have that captive market in their pockets.
Sure, Obama & Co. are painting a picture in which the main beneficiaries of the new scheme would be hard-working people who’ve recently lost insurance because they lost their jobs. But statistically, this doesn’t hold water when the scheme is to make *everybody* get insurance. There really aren’t that many people who are newly uninsured due to the economic downturn, but there are lots and lots of people who were never insured because they’re deadbeats. This scheme is about adding huge numbers of people to already bulging rolls of people who are “entitled” to have the government (i.e. taxpayers) buy them whatever drugs the government-regulated doctors say they “need” — in other words, artificially increasing the total market for prescription drugs. What’s there for a pharma company not to love? This is like bicycle manufacturers and a proposed “green” law to require everyone in the country to own a working bicycle, with the government to buy it for them if they “can’t afford” to buy it themselves.
Aren’t deadbeats etc already getting any medical care they need throgh emergency rooms and or medicaid