By the time november hits, many seniors will be at the hole in coverage. They will be stuck paying insurance premiums and not recieving any drug benefit. They will be hopping mad going into the voting booth.

This is a great synopsis by Joe of an argument of why the Repubs should be thrown out of Congress. Even Repubican voters themselves should be upset about this, it used to be that wasteful, bloated, mismanaged entitlement programs were anathema to them. That was, of course, before their party got into total power and now, having drunk generously from the kool-aid well, intoxicating themselves with the euphoria of stifling liberals in every direction, they need to be sobered up with the realities of a party willing to sell out their grandchildren's taxes to business special interests. It's not going to happen by simply writing insightful articles on Salon though. Democrats have to put into place a disciplined message machine which will get these ideas to all voters in a way that Republicans won't immediately discount them as anti-party and therefore anti-patriotic. Unfortunately, for the hardcore base of Repubs, loyalty to the party, and staying in power, is more important than the best interests of the country.

Joe doesn't get it. The American people are just plain incapable of deciphering this puzzle, no matter how badly they are affected. The R's will find a way to pin just enough of it on the D's and the God-Fearin' Folk of Greater Texas, Inc. will buy it hook, line, and sinker again. We as an electorate are now fully addicted to the spin that we've been shot up with since the Reagan Revolution. We vote "morality", "decency", "patriotism", "no new taxes", "NIMBY", "nice guy", and/or "kill the heathen". That's the extent of our collective understanding - now and for foreseeable future. Get used to it. And please stop trying to get everyone excited about what's going to do in the GOP.

jm

What if no one bought into the hype from the insurance companies, and we all refused to buy the so called coverage/benefit?

We have nothing to lose by doing this. If there is no great insurance cabal to inflate drug prices, drugs have to come down to earth.

This should be called the great drug industry subsidy and benefit plan. Scare the old folks with $65 a tablet prices, tell them they will die without this drug they cannot afford, and make them give back their social security money to the insurance companies.

Too many Democrats do not seem capable of having talking points ready to publicize the things that they want to publicize and debunk those points that their opponents come up with.

This happened with the SwiftBoating of John Kerry - by the time September came around, I could have refuted ANY lies or distortions that the SBV's coulda said in any public meeting - but Democratic reps would sit there seemingly unable to rebut the baseless allegations that the SBV's had made. Much of that was a calculated plan by Kerry and his supporters to ignore the lies and distortions, but that was a stupid plan that failed and I believe cost Kerry the election.

They need to get their acts together. ANYONE who gets up on the public stage representing the Democrats needs to be able to do what Kerry and his supporters should have done in 2004. The Republicans did well for the past 10 years by repeating lies and distortions over and over until they were believed to be the truth. Democrats should follow that agenda in that they should repeat the TRUTH over and over and over again.

Tonight Governor Ed Rendell from Pennsylvania was on PBS's Charlie Rose show, and he made the point that EVERY Democrat should have had a PowerPoint presentation slideshow that documented the Republican position on deficit spending and the National Debt in 1994 (too much debt is a bad thing, government spending should be reined in) versus the Republican behavior since Bush was elected, the effects of their budgets, spending plans and tax cuts, and their lack of an acknowledgement TODAY of the problems with the HUGE deficits that Bush has foisted upon us.

When Bush's budget proposal came out a few days ago, one of the points highlighted was that the budget estimated that the budget deficits would be cut in half by 2009. What was LEFT UNSAID by almost ALL reports was the reason that they said it that way - that they would be cut in half between now and 2009. The reason? Because in 2009, the deficits start growing larger again, and growing at an exponential rate! The decreases in the size of the budget deficits is ONLY a temporary thing, yet the ONLY comment upon those deficits was that they would decrease for the next 3 years.

Democrats HAVE to have a better way to publicize these things that make the Republicans look like the chumps they are.

The importance of this issue to most Americans is probably overstated in this article, but it might well be influential in a presidential election in Florida, a key marginal state with a very large population of retirees.

However, while the Democrats continue to pursue a national policy of not even trying to win elections, no issue, however worthy, will overturn the Republic majority in Congress.

The really interesting stuff will happen at the six-month period, when the prescription plan companies will be able to unilaterally change the contracts that the plan participants have so carefully shopped for. Real surprises in store at that point, and the Republicans have no way to control them.

You guys don't get it. Drugs are just a facet of the wider scope - to convince Americans that the appearance of 'choice' is in and of itself, freedom and efficiency. It doesn't matter that the plans are more expensive, more complicated or ineffective. What's important is that for years we've been fed a stream of propaganda that through some cultural and economic process, called, 'magic', that being bitchslapped around by the invisible free hand of commerce is somehow, 'empowering'. We want to pretend that we are in control and when we pretend that, we delude ourselves that we are better off. That Medicare is forbidden by law to negotiate better rates with the companies, that medicare is forbidden by law to administer their own plan locally and that no single organization is ever permitted a large enough market share to permit economies of scale is besides the point. Americans have been conned into believing that 30 bad plans in their community are a good and great thing. We imagine that all these fake 'choices' with only the slightest differences among them benefit us. But it's a shell game at best.