Quote Originally Posted by boutons_deux
"Medicare does not overlap with private insurance"

as of the last change to Medicare, private does compete with Medicare, is why dubya had to subsidize private insurance with $50B so their lobbyists wouldn't kill the Medicare modification.
Not very much (hence why I said "for the most part" that you so nicely cut out of your quoting me). Medicare has a lot of restrictions on how and why it can be used and who by. Granted, it's been opened up a bit in recent years.

Quote Originally Posted by boutons_deux
btw, dubya's mod to Medicare increased govt bill by about $11B/year.

dubya's Medicare mod also forbid the govt from getting competing bids for drugs

So all you wrongies who "hate govt" please note that the Repugs intentionally up govt to be "business friendly".
LOL. Okay, so you are going to win an argument with people who often believe Medicare is just plain no business of the government by arguing that a leader they liked as little as you screwed it up?

Bush definitely messed it up. At least he tried to reform a broken system, but tried to help too many things at once and really pooched the job (a common occurance with him). I'm certainly not going to argue against that.