Lynn Woolley
Tuesday November 18, 2003

If you said “votes” give yourself a gold star. This new benefit is bad policy and every moderate to conservative member of Congress knows that. But it’s great politics.

Congress’ appetite for spending money is legendary, but new theories are emerging on just why they do it. This writer has come to believe that they do it because the vast majority of us wants them to.

The interesting thing is that so many of us say that we wish Congress wouldn’t spend so much. However, we really don’t mean that. What we mean is that we really wish Congress wouldn’t spend so much on programs that benefit other people. But when it comes to benefiting us personally or bringing pork to our local areas, then Congress can just go right ahead and spend all it wants to.

The pharmaceutical benefit is a case in point. The AARP, a major advocacy group for senior citizens, has endorsed the plan. Did AARP look at what this plan entails for taxpayers or for the future of the United States? The answer is almost certainly “no.”

The AARP was interested in only one group – seniors. Combine that with the fact that seniors form a major voting block and you have a recipe for big spending.

No one asked the hard questions about this new entitlement, so let’s do it now.

First, is this benefit needed, or is it a solution in search of a problem? It’s true that many older people need a lot of medicine and some of that medicine is very costly. It’s also true that many older people are wealthy or have comfortable retirement plans or upwardly mobile children to take care of them. So this isn’t a welfare plan; it’s an entitlement.

Second, is a government program the best solution for the high cost of pharmaceuticals? Almost certainly, the answer is “don’t be ridiculous.”

The Founding Fathers set up government to do a few things – like maintain a military – but most of the things government intrudes into end up as costly mistakes.

At its inception in the Johnson era, Medicare itself was supposed to cost $7 billion by 1985. The real figure was closer to $48 billion. Whatever the government projections are for this program twenty years from now, multiply by a factor of at least seven.

Third, what will this government program do to drug research? Remember, it’s largely due to advances in the field of pharmaceuticals that life expectancy is what it is. If the profit motive is taken away, we may not see any more miracle cures.

Fourth, what about the philosophical implications of taking the country a little farther down the road toward socialism? We already have Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, CHIP insurance for children, and a government-run public school system. Many liberal Democrats are calling for a Hillary-style single-payer healthcare system.

Remember the French bashing that took place when President George W. Bush began talking about going to Iraq? Jokes were flying around the internet about how the French had grown lazy and wouldn’t fight even for their own freedom.

Remember when so many French people died from the heat wave, and there were not enough doctors to treat them? We learned a little about a Socialist country with doctors that work a 35-hour week.

Socialism takes away the initiative of the people and makes them grow fat and complacent. Eventually, in a growing socialist state, taxes get so high that at some point, the people are fully bled. Then, you either have a tax revolt or the government takes over everything and freedom goes away.

The United States has matured to the point that so many of us vote for the politician who promises us the most, and we demand that “federal dollars” be spent on programs to benefit our particular group. These programs are the seeds of our own destruction. But that’s a problem for our children to face. After all, we demanded a new pharmaceutical benefit. And we’re going to get what’s coming to us.

Lynn Woolley’s web site is www.BeLogical.com. His new book “Clear Moral Objectives” is now available.

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