Watch out for Hurricane "Prescription"

My regular column essay at Augusta Free Press is titled "Watch out for Hurricane Prescription." What is now estimated as a $720 billion program over the next 10-years, I suggest will cost closer to the $1.2 trillion that advocates of the program shy away from. Nonetheless, in my middle-class 57-year old opinion, not having a retiree health plan and having had expensive prescriptions, it's not a bad program as it is constructed after 40-years of debates and consensus building. It does rely on managed care, means testing, and private enterprise partnership, techniques and administration. It is not a frozen relic from the 1960's like Medicare.

There will be decades of continuing arguments about and high costs from Part D, what I call the continuing "tidal wave" of Hurricane Prescription. And, we'd better face up to it, the baby boom generation's senior costs will be much higher than anything forecast by anyone. Unless we get on with Social Security reforms and more managed care Medicare reforms.

I did a quick blog search this morning at technorati and google. Other blogs are not discussing this huge Hurricane that hits American shores this Saturday. You might want to "get your hip boots and rowboats ready" for Hurricane Prescription.