Monday, March 21, 2011

Hey, Bruce Barlett: You can cut Medicare deficits by negotiating with drug companies instead of cutting drug plans, you pill!

Over on the Underbelly blog, my friend Buce observes that Republican opinion-maker and supply-sider Bruce Bartlett is melting down over drug costs that George W. Bush signed into law.

Oh please! Spare me!

Up in Canada, they get the same drugs that Americans get for half the price or less. How? The government negotiates with the drug companies.

Medicare isn’t permitted to negotiate under a law passed because of Republican pressure and a few Dems in the pockets of some drug companies. So the drug companies charge you and me more, and then charge the government more – and that second charge also comes back to you and me in the form of taxes or deficits.

If you cut all the “don’t intefere with business” garbage and simply stuck the fingers of some multi-million dollar salary drug company poobahs into thumb screws, the price would fall faster than a drunk tripping on a curbstone.

There’s more than one way to cut a deficit and effectively robbing millions Americans by drowning them in costs isn’t one of them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Bruce Bartlett will say ANYTHING AT ALL to preserve big government programs, big spending, big taxes. He is a bureaucrat of the highest order. He is a useless blight upon God and country.

In centuries ahead, as history reconstructs what caused our downfall, Bruce Bartlett's name will stand tall, in shame.