I’m no fan of the medicare prescription drug benefit, but I will nonetheless say a couple things in its defense:
A) Costs actually did come in lower than CBO projections which given government programs, is close to a miracle.
B) In theory the program should save money on costs of the greater Medicare program because treating a lot of issues with preventative drugs is much cheaper than the surgery which would follow in the absence of the drug (ie. Lipitor now vs. a bypass later).
Mind you I don’t much buy into it either since broke is broke, and spending money to ‘save money’ generally is a bogus assumption. As most seniors had the sense to take those drugs on their own, and buy a form of insurance or some other plan to help with them, to make a federal program was a waste.
The simple truth is that it was a political ploy to court seniors. It was not exactly a high point of the GOP congress.
Your post highlights the root issue with government spending. Nearly everything the federal government does can be rationalized (not saying you believe the drug benefit was justified).
Congressmen and senators are probably inundated with requests for help. Take unemployment insurance for example. There are plenty of unemployed, and there’s no doubt many are helped by the insurance. Statists, you see, always have a list of reasons why the government needs to act.
Conservatism is more nuanced. Using the unemployment example again, I don’t know of many conservatives who aren’t also concerned about unemployment. It would be easy to hand out checks, but that only addresses the immediate problem and creates an array of problems later on, like how to pay for it.
So my point is there’s always a reason for expanding government, and both parties have done virtually nothing to reign in the constant expansion of government. For all those posters who claim Republicans are better, the Democrats don’t run as the party of small government. It’s the Republicans who claim that but never deliver.
Both parties are poisonous. The Republican dose is smaller, but the only difference is between killing the patient with a massive dose now versus killing him with a smaller dose later. That’s why I say a whole lot of politicians in both parties need to be retired, and that’s what irks me in particular about Republican Party apologists (not saying you’re one, but take a look at some of them on this thread).