The callousness of those who mock or denigrate their fears on this just blows my mind. For the first time since Medicare was established, we have Democrats, most notably the president, parading around promising that health care reform will be accomplished on the back of largely unspecified cuts in Medicare.  And somebody, anybody, thinks they should be sanguine about the prospect?

In-network pharmacy... generics went from $4.00 to $7.00, Preferred Brand $25 to $40. non-preferred brand from $54 to $70... these are 30 day supplies.

BTW - One Rx for say, a 10 day supply, counts as a 30 day supply, so if you need a second Rx of the same drug within 30 days, the payment starts over. On a non-preferred brand that means another out of pocket payment of $210... $420 for the month..

Some in-network mail order drug prices ... the actual drug price that counts on the "doughnut hole".....increased in the 8%-9% range between 2008 and 2009.

I have no idea as to what the payment that the drug companies have agreed to actually means but my guess is that any price reductions will be means tested... which says that the middle class will get it stuck to us to pay for what they have given to the "poor."

It's not as if healthcare were a new idea to any of them...it's been in every Democratic platform as long as I can remember and I'm 73 with a good memory.  

So...Nixon left government 35 years ago.  Eighteen years later, the Democrats had both houses and a new Democratic president who wanted to do healthcare.  Gee whiz.  What happened?  Not healthcare!  Some of us know what happened.  We were there.

Now, here we are...15 years later and these Democrats don't have a plan?  Jesus H. Christ.

I was thinking of LBJ...a greater legislator than Teddy I'd say.  And Warren Magnuson, Maggie...another incomparable but not recent enough to be lauded by this gang...and not a Kennedy, of course.  And Hubert Humphrey.  All of them, legislators with major achievements under great stress and sometimes at great risk.  

Yet Teddy gets the over-the-top accolades which do not seem to me to be deserved in the greater scheme of things.  He didn't achieve the goal of his life and he had at least two good chances if he was the kind of legislator/leader so many are now saying he was.

http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn08282009.html

The real cost we are paying now is in the price of oil. Perhaps you remember that in 12/98 oil was $9.56. It then rose slowly, staying mostly in the mid 20's through January 2004. It then drifted upward to $50.17 by January 2007. At that point it started a rise to the $145 range by mid July 2008. At that point an already weak economy was destroyed.

Some blame speculators. Others blame the Democratic controlled Congress and their "no drill anywhere in the US" energy policy and never touch oil shale...... I say both.

No matter who is to blame, oil is now back around $70 and the economy in for a another hit.