Medicare Blowback

Kevin Drum brings us this:

Here's an entry from the It-Couldn't-Happen-To-More-Deserving-Folks file:

Almost half of Medicare recipients dislike the new prescription drug law, and nearly 3 in 10 seniors and disabled persons say the issue will influence their vote for president, according to a national survey
released Tuesday.

The survey suggests that there are "maybe a half-million seniors" who might swing their votes to Democratic candidate John F. Kerry and another "1 million to 2 million whose votes might be up for grabs on this issue," said Drew E. Altman, president and chief executive of the private,
nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.

....Only 3 in 10 of those on Medicare believe that the law's benefits — partial coverage of prescription drug costs for those who choose to participate in that program, a voluntary prescription discount card
available until the drug benefit takes effect in 2006, and new coverage for some preventive health services — will help them personally.

This Bush administration could have passed a $200 billion bill that actually provided $200 billion worth of simple, straightforward benefits to seniors. Instead, they chose to pass a $500 billion bill that squanders the bulk of its benefits on sweetheart deals for corporate pension funds, pharmaceutical companies, HMOs, insurance companies, and unworkable privatization pilot schemes that congressmen practically fought to avoid being part of.

The Medicare bill is a model of the Bush administration at work: an initially reasonable idea made unrecognizable by deep frying it in a witch's brew of bloated spending, dishonest accounting, fealty to big corporate contributors, crackheaded movement conservative ideology, and just plain incompetence. If Bush ends up losing the election partly as a result of a revolt of seniors over this bill, it will be poetic justice.

Why are these people thought of as "fiscal conservatives"????? It is this kind of ridiculous nonsense that has this country so deep in debt we may never see the light of day.

Why do people who call themselves "fiscal conservatives" support this kooks? They're just nuts.

I do not think it would be possible for ANY administration to squander more money than these boneheads.

An administration should be fired for just this kind of BS. If the next admin does the same thing, they should be fired.