corrente

Of course, it's a "botch" only if you're a taxpayer, or a "beneficiary." If you're Big Pharma—not a Rush joke, really [rimshot]—you're laughing all the way to the bank:

The White House released budget figures yesterday indicating that the new Medicare prescription drug benefit will cost more than $1.2 trillion in the coming decade, a much higher price tag than President Bush suggested when he narrowly won passage of the law in late 2003.
(via WaPo)

What a surprise!

At a House Ways and Means Committee hearing, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) taunted Treasury Secretary John W. Snow about the rhetorical discrepancies.

"If you're looking for a crisis, I would suggest you look at a crisis that was self-made in just last year, because the crisis exists in what's happened to Medicare by weighing it down," Emanuel said. "Those of us who told you it was going to cost twice as much were right."

Only in the SCLM would saying the simple truth be described as "taunting." Sigh...

Of course, one way to lower the price of the program would be to allow the Federal Government to use its massive purchasing power. (Why do you think Canadian drug prices are lower?) But the law—I wonder why?—expressly forbids that.

Nice to see Rahm Emanuel ripping John Snow a new one, too. More like this, please.