Prescription Drug 'Benefit'?? Hey, it benefits the DRUG Companies!! Your Congressman, Once Again, Acts as a Bush Leftist Lap Dog and 'Accidentally' (?) Votes for Socialism for the Rich in the Name of the Elderly

How could a guy who voted to abolish the Federal Medicare entitlement and said we should leave it to states (Dec 2000) do a complete ideological about face and support the whorish Prescription Drug Benefit? Even Rush Limbaugh criticized this Bush-league nonsense. Clearly, the bill was merely a end-of-2003 lollipop for the elderly in order to sway Florida in the upcoming 2004 elections, or so it seemed. As it turned out, the thing was so complicated that even policy wonks had trouble understanding it, so how did my opponent, already in his seventies, expect some of his less-sentient fellow septuagenarians to understand it? Most of the still-sentient ones I discussed it with DIDN'T like it, so it probably didn't have the 'sway Florida' impact which some had hoped it would have. However, it DID drive up the price the drug companies could charge! You see, any time you have a Federal subsidy to anything, whether it's school (e.g., school loans), housing (FHA loans), or anything else, it may drive down the net-of-subsidy price to the consumer, but not by the full subsidy since it also drives up the gross-of-subsidy price. This is why many oh-so-well-intended programs that are supposed to be socialism for the poor end up being socialism-for-the-rich-in-the-name-of-the-poor. This may explain why in the July 2005 meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council there were so many drug company booths. "The Bush 'Conservatives' (yeah, right)....BROUGHT to you by....SOCIALIST MEDICINE!!!" Would it surprise any of you that medical supply firms are a big part of my opponent's contributions? Oh, good, this is the smart class!

The fact that Sam Johnson is Bush's lap dog instead of having the intellectual courage to support positions he's supported in the past is not only obvious here but also in his vote for so-called Leaving No Child Behind (since he's previously supported ABOLISHING the Department of Education as recently as December 2000) and his vote for the War in Iraq, despite having a previously flawlessly isolationist stance until Bush was elected.