Folksy Fred Thompson answers some voter questions while rolling through Central Florida:
Here he explains why he would have voted against the recent Medicare prescription drug coverage program.
Sound Bite: “We shouldn’t be adding on programs that make the solution even that much more difficult.”
And Fred’s no fan of the current tax system.
Sound Bite: “There are several good plans out there that move us in the right direction. And I think that we need to take ‘em, put ‘em on the table and see what we can do, with the underlying goal of doing away with the current tax code that’s an abominable mess.”
Fred Thompson is a “typical republican” in that he blames Medicare’s escalating costs on the fact that it’s an entitlement that needs reform, not however on the reality that the costs of medical services in the US far outpaces inflation by double digit percentiles. Why is that?
It’s the same bate & switch republicans and democrats have been using effectively since Ronald Reagan to try and end social security “as we know it”. However, the social security revenues are not tax revenues. Although, since Ronald Reagan, all administrations have been counting it as as general revenue when they issue budget numbers each fiscal year. What this means is first off, federal deficits have been larger these lasts 25 years than officially acknwoledged, and that the federal government is more responsible for undermining the social security trust fund than the program itself.
Mr. Thompson praises the last Congress for trying to pass a drug prescription bill with good intentions, but due to the fact that the entitlement as he calls it, needs major reform, this bill was doomed to failure.
Either he is ill-informed or he is being deceptive. There is one simple and these issues are usually not so simple, reason why this bill is not sustainable. The money to pay for it is not there, and the reason for that is also obvious. Congress refused to compel the drug industries to offer their products to Medicare at bulk discount prices, like every other industrialized nation in the West that offers socialized or rather subsidized medical services.
If this key provision had been placed in this bill, Fred Thompson would not have been given this question “on the bus” and we would not have had to suffer through another layer of corporately influenced deceit and obfuscation of reality.
If you feel I am being political, then consider this; There is ironically enough a Federal agency that does barters with Pharma for price discounts. And they do quite well actually in this area, in terms of costs and efficiency. It’ the Veterans Administration.
So, if Fred is serious and more importantly genuine, he need only look to the VA a federal agency, which Congress created, for a model which can be used to devise a drug prescription bill which would be affordable for taxpayers and medicare recipients as well.
I can guarantee you Fred won’t.
Joey Green