Free Drugs FOr Wizened Citizens (Boortz)

Neal Boortz Program Notes ^ | June 13, 2003 | Neal Boortz

[rattrap]

FREE DRUGS FOR WIZENED CITIZENS

Step by step … here is how it’s going to work. Print this and safe it.  You can show it to your children or grandchildren to help explain why the government is taking 60% of everything they earn. 

1. Democrats propose a grand new spending program.  Senior citizens are going to be able to use someone else’s money to buy their prescription drugs.  Senior citizens pledge their electoral support to Democrats as thanks.
2. Republicans start chanting “me too!” and get on board with the free drugs for old folks plan, hoping that at least some of the wrinkled class will vote for them.
3. Senior citizens spend an average of $650 a year on prescription drugs right now.  As soon as the drug benefit is added to Medicare the pharmaceutical companies will start marketing many more drugs to old folks.  “Ask your doctor about Noasital.”
4. Seniors will rush off to their Medicare doctors and say “Tell me about Noasital.”  They’ll insist on a prescription for Noaiital, and any other drug they happen to see advertised, and many doctors will be all too willing to go along.
5. The average yearly spending by seniors on prescription drugs will skyrocket from $650 a year to thousands of dollars a year. 
6. In short order the projections for spending on the new prescription drug benefit will have been left in the dust.  What was sold to us as a $40 billion a year program will be costing well over $100 billion a year .. and going nowhere but up.  Politicians and bureaucrats will start expressing their “concerns” and a fix will be demanded.
7. The “fix” to rising spending on drugs for wrinkled class will be to put limits on what Medicare will pay for certain prescription drugs, just as Medicare has already put limits on what will be paid for certain medical services.
8. Pharmaceutical companies will find that they aren’t making any money on selling these drugs to seniors because of the Medicare price controls.  In fact, they may find that they are actually losing money. To compensate for these lost profits the pharmaceutical companies will simply increase prices for these and other drugs to their non-Medicare patients. 
9. As the prices of prescription drugs for non-Medicare Americans go up, so will the price of health insurance coverage.  Insurance companies aren’t going to suffer these increased costs without passing them off to the insured.  Basically this is the same thing that has happened in many other areas of health care.  Medicare institutes price controls, health care providers make up the difference by charging other patients more, health insurance companies raise premiums … and so on.
10. As prescription prices and health insurance premiums increase for non-Medicare Americans, so will the demand for politicians to step in and do something.  Politicians, always hungry for both votes and power, will be all-too-happy to oblige.
11. Politicians will start demagoguing drug companies.  They will be called “greedy” and will be accused of “profiteering” and “exploiting” the frail health of our precious senior citizens.
12. After a short period of scare-mongering the politicians will vote to institute price controls on the pharmaceutical companies.  Politicians will tell us that they are doing this to reign in these greedy corporate monsters who are becoming obscenely rich on the backs of sick Americans.
13. With price controls the earnings figures for pharmaceutical companies will go into the toilet. 
14. As earnings go down pharmaceutical companies will have less and less to spend on research and development for new drugs.  Research into ways to treat disease will show down and, eventually, will become the province of government.
15. Government will be the eventual beneficiary of this mess as the masses clamor for more and more government solutions to these problems that are perceived to be the fault of the private sector.

[usmom]

Does being old give these people a right to reach in to our walletts?

No.

[usmom]

I live in Florida.

YOu have my deepest sympathies!I can only imagine how frustrating the scenarios you describe must be. It is so pathetic that older people choose to move away from and cut themselves off from their families just for some warmer weather. Then like you said, their spouse dies, they get frail and old and there they are all alone. Then they expect the government to step in and be their surrogate family and take care of all their needs.

[usmom]

Several points. First of all, if you disagree with the plan, why didn't you just say so. Your posts would definitley lead someone to believe otherwise.

I have nothing against people being old- just people being old and thinking they can rob others of their money to subsidize their retirement, health care and drugs. I also have a problem with old people that go around thinking that since they have lived a certain number of years, they are now exempt from the rules of civil society and go around making everyone they come into contact miserable. The fact that many seniors fall into these categories is not my fault. Seniors that do not hold those views I have no problem with and utmost respect for (people like my parents for example).

Of course I realize this is just a vote getting attempt to pit one group of people against another. Which is all the more reason that people should be loudly denouncing this on principle. The fact that you don't leads me to believe that even though you see this program for what it is, deep down you really don't care since you will get some benefit from it.

Please don't give me that innocent 'where did I say that I support it' line. Anyone who reads your posts would get that idea. If you don't support it and want no part of it, say so! Why all the moaning for seniors who can't afford drugs and your $10 co-pay after you've worked so hard, and telling everyone how they will be old, too, one day (i.e. and then you'll want this program, too)! If those comments were supposed to show how much you disagree with this program, I guess I missed it.

[Princeton]

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