Medicare

The Assault on Medicare
Editorial

No one who has reviewed the changes in Medicare proposed by the Bush administration and the Republican leadership in the Congress has any doubt regarding the motivation behind the legislation. Corporate-tied conservatives made a commitment to begin the process of privatizing Medicare and they are now delivering on that commitment.
Under the guise of creating a prescription drug benefit, the proponents of the legislation , in fact, crafted a scheme designed to enrich pharmaceutical companies while saddling seniors with high co-pays and costs that will continue to make needed medicines unaffordable for millions of citizens. Worse yet, the legislation seeks to use billions of taxpayer dollars to break up the Medicare program and hand the pieces over to the same for-profit concerns that have made the U.S. health care system one of the costliest and most inefficient in the world. So corrupt is the legislation that it actually bans initiatives to lower drug prices.