Despite Mr. Obama's various successes, in the last four years, he has proven to be just as miserable a negotiator as he has a superb campaigner. Despite the constant carping by his jealous opponents, taking "to the road" is the only effective way for this president to accomplish anything meaningful in his handling of domestic issues. Candidate Obama was swept into office promising to clean up Medicare, only to run into the parasites in his own party, those licentious congressmen and senators subservient to the durable goods, oxygen companies and laboratory lobbies. While these lobbies had gradually been sucking Medicare dry for some twenty years in the form of tens of billions of dollars each year in gross over-payments (usually three to four times retail or competitive prices), greedy Republican lobbies have sought to even that amount of graft in a much shorter time. The President has suggested cutting approximately sixteen billion dollars per year in over-payments for drugs under Part D by introducing "some form" of competitive bargaining. Considering that the V.A. and the military pay an average of 40-50 % of the inflated Medicare prices, by my arithmetic, that means that Part D overspent at least thirty billion dollars last year alone and G-d knows how much this year !
It's time to hit the road again, Mr. President. It's time to actually take the real case to the people, to stop soiling your clothes under the constant barrage of threats by your own party's apostates. Demand accountability from guilty Democratic lobbies and then tell the people to demand the same competitive bidding from Medicare Part D enjoyed by the Veteran's Administration and the military! Face it, Sir. Out of all the really, really stupid wars that you have naively bought into, including the "War on Drugs," "The War on Terror," "The War on Poverty," all representing excuses for not having organized policies, the only important war is The War on Corporate Welfare!
Al Finkelstein 12/14/12