JohnH wrote:

I can't disagree with that. The Army now is getting their hearing aids
through
the Veteran's Administration. The Army is not allowed to negotiate with
the
companies, but the VA is.

I don't know if the same is true of drugs, but it was kind of
interesting. A
doctor at Walter Reed told me this last week.

**********

Good lord, John. We agree on something? One of us needs to see a
doctor, right away. :-)


The Medicare reform gives one pause to consider the next target, Social
Security.
Here's the "person of foreign parentage" hiding in the woodpile with
the proposed Social Security "reform": If under the Bush plan, where
the money diverted from private accounts
can only go to a "limited group of securities", won't the enterprises
represented by those securities see their stock prices shoot over the
moon?

Who will pick which lucky companies the billions of diverted dollars a
year will be buying up?
Who will make multiple millions merely by knowing, in advance, which
securities will be "approved"?

Why can't we reform a system without creating a windfall for one
special interest group or another? Reformed shouldn't really mean
"reshaped" into a funnel, with a campaign booster's
open wallet at the bottom. I'm sure plenty of previous presidents from
both parties have done the same thing, but it was and remains wrong.