Subject: Being Democrat Doesn’t Always Mean Doing The Right Thing: A mistaken belief of “I’m getting mine, screw the rest of you” or a case of “Money talks” or “I may not be a Republican but I’m just as dumb” The Plot Against Medicare, Paul Krugman (Economist) The plot against Social Security failed: President Bush’s attempt to privatize the system crashed and burned when the public realized what he was up to. But the plot against Medicare is faring better: the stealth privatization embedded in the Medicare Modernization Act, which Congress literally passed in the dead of night back in 2003, is proceeding apace. Worse yet, the forces behind privatization not only continue to have the G.O.P. in their pocket, but they have also been finding useful idiots within the newly powerful Democratic coalition. And it’s not just politicians with an eye on campaign contributions. There’s no nice way to say it: the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens have become patsies for the insurance industry. … To appreciate what’s going on, you need to know what has been happening to Medicare in the last few years. The 2003 Medicare legislation created Part D, the drug benefit for seniors … At the same time, the bill sharply increased payments to Medicare Advantage plans, which also funnel Medicare funds through insurance companies. As a result, Medicare … is becoming, instead, a system in which the government pays the insurance industry to provide coverage. And a lot of the money never makes it to the people Medicare is supposed to help.… Reasonable estimates suggest that if Congress had eliminated the middlemen, it could have created a much better drug plan — one without the notorious “doughnut hole,” the gap in coverage once your annual expenses exceed $2,400 per year — at no higher cost. With the Democratic victory last fall, you might have expected these things to change. But the political news over the last few days has been grim. First, the Senate failed to end debate on a bill — in effect, killing it — that would have allowed Medicare to negotiate over drug prices. … 42 senators, all Republicans, voted no on allowing the bill to go forward. At the same time, attempts to rein in those Medicare Advantage payments seem to be running aground. …(B)oth the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens sending letters to Congressional leaders opposing plans to scale back the subsidy. What seems to have happened is that both groups have been taken in by insurance industry disinformation…Public opinion is strongly in favor of universal health care, and for good reason: fear of losing health insurance has become a constant anxiety of the middle class. Yet even as we talk about guaranteeing insurance to all, privatization is undermining Medicare — and people who should know better are aiding and abetting the process.

RESPONSE: Single payer government run health care...call it socialized medicine would indeed remove the middle man, the insurance companies, who are profit driven and as a result make medical decisions too often based not on medical information but on their bottom line as they reject this or that medical treatment that doctors recommend. The scam Republican plan of Republicans in Massachusetts and California to force their residents to buy health care insurance is the latest salvo in the Republican markets solve all problems scam.

The Medicare ‘D’ scam that Bush Republicans passed when his sycophants controlled Congress which forbid any kind of bargaining for lower drug prices because of the purchase of large quantities of drugs (isn’t that what a ‘market’ does) is but the latest indication of the sell out of the American public to large corporate interests in return for campaign contributions. We saw when Democrats took over Congress the attempt to allow government to bargain for lower drug prices killed by Republicans in Congress...and of course our own Bush lackey frank THE HYPOCRITE lobiondo voted against lower prices via market force bargaining. HUH?

The irony of course is that Democratic constituencies who have union provided health coverage are content with the present system as they are fine and so we see in effect teachers, cops, government workers, and casino workers ... saying to their fellow citizens...’I got mine and don’t care about you.’ Of course, many of these selfish folks vote Republican.