This article compares the rollouts of the original Medicare plan and that of Part D. One went smoothly and one didn't -- not hard to guess which is which. One plan had the best interest of seniors in mind, the other that of big pharma and the insurance companies. One is a model of efficiency, the other a boondoggle of needless complexity. Bush and his group of small government (when it suits them) fanatics did a good job trying to undermine a longstanding program with a proven social benefit; one that coincidentally is an example of an efficient, public single payer system.
A tale of two Medicare plan rollouts
By Saul Friedman
Newsday.com
... "Medicare has become the most popular and successful program of the last 40 years," Hayes said, "because the president [Lyndon Johnson] believed in the efficacy of government."
And author Nancy Altman ("The Battle for Social Security") said that while Johnson and the Congress relied on professionals in government to design Medicare, President George W. Bush and the Republican leadership disdained government and Part D was written in secret by drug and insurance industry lobbyists, then narrowly passed under cover of darkness. ...
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