Junior's Radio Address is all about Medicare...what about freedom?

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

I guess he spent himself on yesterday's howling indictment of the Democrats and his critics.

Today's Radio Address is warm and fuzzy, just like a newborn bunny rabbit.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051112.html



:grouphug:

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. All warm and fuzzy

like the blankets the old people will have to wrap themselves in while they eat their evening can of cat food because they no longer have Medicare, after it's been trashed by Wall Street under Bush's brilliant new plan.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. This plan is eviscerated by a great Krugman column today

which exposes the shortcomings of this stupid plan. "Doughnut Hole" should be a new talking point for Dems. Bush "acts" like he cares, but it is an act. This plan is a gross canard. Older people are very smart when it comes to seeing whether something is actually helpful or just an illusion. This act can just be stacked on the evergrowing pile of inadequacies, incompetencies, and misrepresentations by this President.

[zann725]

3. The "new" Medicare prescription coverage is NO warm bunny at all.

Just same old crap.

Check the details. ONLY "a third" of Senior Medicare recipients will benefit from new discounts.

AND, most importantly, ALL Medicare recipients must FIRST spend $3,600 out-of-pocket in prescription drugs, BEFORE their "discounts" kick in. Since most Seniors AND particularly Disabled who are disqualified from other discounts due to their slightly higher than Social Security income, will find it difficult, if NOT impossible to even first clear that $3,600 "bar." For many in both groups, it will no longer be a matter of cutting their pills in half to make their meds last budgetarily. As of 2006, paying $3,600 FIRST out-of-pocket, means most of both groups will NOT even be able to afford the pills to EVEN cut in half...because of this LARGE out-of-pocket "up-front" cost. Something the Neo-cons can't even begin to understand...or don't want to.

And these "discounts" include a heavy "reliance" on "generics." May I say that I am currently on a "generic" (to save $$), and like other generics, the quality is inconsistent, and doseage does NOT even feel similar from generic manufacturer to manufacturer.

And since Rumsfield is now in the "pharmaceutical" business, my (apologetically tin-foil) thought is that any "discounts" Seniors or the Disabled eventually get once they clear the $3,600 "bar," could quite possibly be experiemental generic drugs. As neither the Elderly nor the Disabled are groups that the Neo-cons wish to see continue receiving "entitlements." Given that, what kind of discount drug "benefits" do you truly believe are being offered?