Max Sawicky writes:

MaxSpeak, You Listen!: MEDI-PRAYER : If you think Bush is in trouble now, wait till people start experiencing the new Medicare drug benefit. This is going to be a huge debacle.

Friend of mine met with some local health care providers and consumers. People have no idea what they're in for. Some drugs with no substitutes aren't covered at all. Some generics give some people side effects, but the name-brand stuff won't be covered. If you don't sign up for a plan on time, you get penalized. You get put into a default plan. Then there's the big donut hole -- what one person called "an abyss." All kinds of shit.

What you have are all sorts of Catch-22s aimed at cutting the cost -- which is through the roof anyway -- so that the R's could run on passage of the bill in 2004. Unfortunately they won't be able to run on its actual implementation. They'll be running from it.

Democratic moral of the story, going into the '06 midterms: don't let Republicans write social insurance legislation....

Bigger moral: we need Medicare for all.... Don't screw around with "public-private partnerships" to save the health insurance industry.