the prescription drug plan was confusing and was more of a windfall to pharmeceutical companies, and a bribe to get Seniors to vote for Bush than anything else

If people were buying drugs under this benefit that they weren’t buying before, yes, it’s a windfall. (The decision not to negotiate drug prices, which nobody has the right to expect, does not constitute a windfall.) Who else could see this as a windfall? Why, employers who dropped drug coverage for their retirees once this drug benefit was enacted, that’s who.

The drug benefit, “doughnut hole” blemish and all, has been more successful than Democratic and liberal critics anticipated, and which they must concede.

He’s totally the wrong person to talk about fiscal responsibility

Up to now he’s been a big spender, no doubt. (a.k.a. “compassionate conservative”)

So, massive expansion of entitlements like the prescription drug benefit passed by the GOP?

1) Plenty of people have criticized this, the largest expansion of federal entitlements since the introduction of Medicare. Even the way it was done has been criticized: “It’s hard to remember when more people violated more stated principles to enact such an unprincipled law.”

2) What criticism have the Democrats typically made about this benefit? That it’s not good enough (and more specific criticisms such as regarding the “doughnut hole” and payments to pharmacies).

Or, as I said,

What is regrettable is that often the Republicans are fundamentally in agreement with Big Government, simply not as big as what the Democrats seek.

So, massive expansion of entitlements like the prescription drug benefit passed by the GOP? The hypocrisy of the GOP is astonishing.

Will the defects in the bill be removed or reduced?

Will the cost increase for the bill be reduced?

* * *

Superdestroyer:

Maybe the next time around, the Democrats can explain how they plan to have massive expansions of entitlement programs while maintain an open border, unlimited immigration program?

If they were honest, they would admit it is to get additional exploitee votes.

The other question to answer is with the coming Democratic party dominance of government, why should anyone want to start a career in health care?

I dispute your assumption of permanent eventual Democratic dominance; Americans have rejected this, as demonstrated with the election of Ronald Reagan (whom the losers on the Left loathed often as much as they loathe Bush’s being elected twice in contemporary times). Americans are probably going to want federal government health care for everybody in the long run, and there is a growing dependency as well as entitlement problem insofar as people and their relationship to government is concerned, but people continue to become more conservative normally as they grow older and more wise, and our population is aging.

What is regrettable is that often the Republicans are fundamentally in agreement with Big Government, simply not as big as what the Democrats seek.

As to problems with health care professionals in the future, I agree wholeheartedly. It’s not just the eventual cost-cutting that we already have seen in some cases*. There will be massive cost-cutting in later years, combined with innumerable regulations and yes, bureaucracy (it will not go away when for-profit medicine goes away). Meanwhile, if the health care pros are kept nominally (and legally) private, they remain subject to junk-lawsuit abuse. (In fact, under any federal-or-state-government-monopoly “single-payer” [sic] system, the employees have the right to sue for federal government worker benefits as well as sovereign immunity from lawsuits, because if private provision of services that duplicate government benefits are prohibited, these people are in fact employees of government.)

* I’m aware of this in particular for dialysis payments and payments to doctors by Medicare in general; in addition, Congress wants to force employers to pay for an additional year of dialysis before transferring responsibility to Medicare, while at the same time transplant-related immunosuppression medications are only covered for pre-retirement-age patients for three years. The #1 cause of graft failure is failure to follow the immunosuppression regimen, and the #1 reason for failure is the high cost, which can exceed $5000 monthly.

A fair question and one that the Democratic leadership will be answering in the next few days since the current funding extension for the program expires in mid-November.

The other question to answer is with the coming Democratic party dominance of government, why should anyone want to start a career in health care?