Grassley showed no concern when he voted for the bloated Medicare Rx bill. Projected price: $1T+

[flpoljunkie]

After being besieged by protesters at meetings across his home state of Iowa, Grassley said he has concluded that the public has rejected the far-reaching proposals Democrats have put on the table, viewing them as overly expensive precursors to "a government takeover of health care."

Grassley said he remains hopeful that he and five other members of the Senate Finance Committee can draft a better, less costly plan capable of winning broad support from Democrats and Republicans. But as the group, known as the Gang of Six, prepared to continue talking via teleconference late Thursday, Grassley said the members may be forced to reassess the breadth of their efforts in light of public concerns.

"Not just on health care, but on a lot of other things Congress has done this year, people are signaling that we ought to slow up and find out where we are and don't spend so much money and don't get us so far into debt," he said in a telephone interview between stops in Iowa Falls and Ames, where he has been leading foreign diplomats on a week-long tour of the state. The Finance Committee group is still discussing a "comprehensive" plan for extending coverage to millions of uninsured families, he said, but revisiting that approach would be "a natural outcome of what people may be getting from the town hall meetings."

Senate roll call vote on Bush's 2003 Prescription Drug Bill: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=108&session=1&vote=00262

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/19/AR2009081904125.html

Democrats will have to be both the liberals and the conservatives on health care. They must have been rolling in the aisles this week when Sen. Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, announced, "There is no way Republicans are going to support a trillion-dollar-plus bill."

Republicans already have. In 2006, their Medicare drug benefit legislation was projected to cost $1.08 trillion over 10 years. (This was just one benefit serving one slice of the population.) Last year, the estimate was reduced to a tad under $1 trillion, and Republicans rejoiced over the great deal they had struck.

There was nothing traditionally conservative about the Medicare drug benefit. Republicans were simply shoveling taxpayer dollars to their friends in the insurance and drug industry. This was crony capitalism, Chinese-style.

And the drug benefit was certainly not fiscally conservative. The Bush administration and Congress had absolutely no thought of paying for the thing -- other than borrowing the money and passing the bill onto future generations.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/20/democrats_must_fix_health_care_alone_97962.html

[tosh]

1. Of course he didn't.

Part D was a GIFT to BIG PHARMA.

All part of the GRAND PLAN to transfer public $$ to private hands.