Op-Ed Columnist: Stalking the Giant Chicken Coop By BOB HERBERT, NYTimes

The Bush administration has mastered the art of legalized banditry, in which tons of government money — the people’s money — are hijacked and handed over to the special interests.

Drug company stock prices soared with the passage of the Medicare bill, a sign that another government vault had been blown open and the big Medicare money was in play. The Republicans are not subtle about these matters. The bill, for example, specifically prohibits the government from negotiating discounts or lower drug prices, and bars the importation of cheaper drugs from abroad. …

[In 1965,] the growls of opposition in the background were muted. Medicare was a desperately needed program, and it grew to be a wildly popular one. But conservatives were outraged by it. Socialized medicine, they snarled. Un-American.
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Ronald Reagan saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would ”invade every area of freedom in this country.” …

Newt Gingrich ranted against Medicare in the 1990’s, comparing its operations to “centralized command bureaucracies” in Moscow. …

After nearly four decades, during which Medicare significantly improved the health and economic conditions of the nation’s elderly, this unrelenting hostility can fairly be called an obsession.

Today President Bush will sign into law a prescription drug benefit under Medicare that will introduce the first cold drafts of bitter reality to the G.O.P.’s long dream of dismantling Medicare as we’ve known it.