I realized something from reading this that I hadn’t thought of before. If the primary purchasers of prescription drugs are also the people on Medicare.. would this not be ASKING for the cost of drugs to go up? Where’s the incentive to make drugs cost less when the manufacturers know that most of the money being used to pay for their products comes out of the government’s pocket, not their customers? And where is the customer’s incentive to be concerned with cost when so much of it is prepaid without their intervention?

And finally, you make a great point about the wealth redistribution. It is not at all fair to steal from those still trying to make it in the world to give to those who already had their shot and failed at it. Maybe that makes me an insensitive “whipper snapper”, but oh well.