Presuming that it passes with the House's Medicare privatization option in it, the supplimental medication bill will be yet another example of how Bush is privitatizing, rather than socializing, federal government (e.g. Bush's move to put more than 400,000 federal job positions up for competitive bids, Bush's proposal to privatize Social Security, Bush's move to abolish the federal "fair wage" standard for contractors, etc.).This would be funny if it weren't so tragic. Privatization means that a private citizen pays into an insurance fund and the federal government never becomes involved. It would not act as a middle-man with tax dollars. It dosen't mean that private citizens pay the federal government tax dollars, and it open bids for private contractors to fulfill them.
If this was privitization the federal government wouldn't be projecting and earmarking $450 billion (but what will turn into trillions of) dollars worth of tax ependitures to fulfill this new obligation.
This is a new program. It's going to be paid for by tax dollars. That is not privatization whether private sector contractors facilitate this or not.
The social security issue has the same problem. Bush will put more than 400,000 federal job positions up for bids. All this means is that 400,000 people will be getting pay cuts and moving off the government payroll. That's not such a bad thing by the way But guess who will still wind up paying their salaries? The US taxpayer will.
Once again, to privitize something you take government out of the equation all together. The way to privatize social security is to slowly increase what people save in their TSAs, while slowly decreasing what they will get from Social Security when they retire. It'g going to take quite a while to accomplish this, but it should begin today.
"If this was privitization the federal government wouldn't be projecting and earmarking $450 billion (but what will turn into trillions of) dollars worth of tax ependitures to fulfill this new obligation."
No, that's not a fair characterization.
Prescription drugs **will** cost us more money, at least in the short term (we should also see some benefits, as right now Medicare recipients are encouraged to wait until surgery is required, because surgery is covered by the old Meidcare, rather than take anything proactively such as medicine, becuase medicine wasn't covered).
That's your initial $450 Billion or whatever figure someone in Washington A.C./D.C. has swagged.
The Medicare privatization option, however, doesn't kick in for ten years. But getting the federal government in competition with private industry to manage Medicare is HUGE! That's how you get cuts in that massive bureaucracy (not an easy feet with a divided nation and Congress, either). In the mean time, Medicare is going to cost us some bucks. Nonetheless, its administration is going to be privatized, something that the Left is currently bashing Ted Kennedy for over on DU.