General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRemember Bush's Medicare Prescription Drug Plan?
Is this what the Republicans are pissed off about??
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9328-2005Feb8.html
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The White House released budget figures yesterday indicating that the new Medicare prescription drug benefit will cost more than $1.2 trillion in the coming decade, a much higher price tag than President Bush suggested when he narrowly won passage of the law in late 2003.
The projections represent the most complete picture to date of how much the program will cost after it begins next year. The expense of the new drug benefit has been a source of much controversy since the day Congress approved it, with Democrats and some Republicans complaining that the White House has consistently low-balled the expected cost to the government.
As recently as September, Medicare chief Mark B. McClellan said the new drug package would cost $534 billion over 10 years. Last night, he acknowledged that the cumulative cost of the program between 2006 and 2015 will reach $1.2 trillion, but he cited several major savings and offsets that he said will reduce the federal government's bottom-line cost to $720 billion.
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subterranean
(3,427 posts)Unfortunately Bush and the Republicans wrote in provisions that prohibit Medicare from doing that.
SOS
(7,048 posts)Every business gets a better price from the supplier when they buy in bulk.
Yet these crooks made it illegal for Medicare to even ask for a volume discount.
"Free-market capitalism" is the mantra of the rich and powerful, but when it comes to their
money they prefer a corrupt, uncompetitive oligarchy.
RC
(25,592 posts)getting the private insurance companies out of the drug and medical insurance business?
How do CEO 's bousus and stock holders dividends help keep health care cost down and how do they contribute to your good health, anyway?
We keep talking and dancing around the real problem as if it doesn't really exist and keep coming up with grandiose ideas that are nothing more than diddling with the symptoms that are caused by the simple fact that private insurance companies are involved in the first place.