There are several good commentaries on the prescription drug benefit plan, which is perhaps the biggest new entitlement program in 40 years.

Thomas Sowell: Drugs and Politics

Some politicians say that the government can "bring down the costs" of prescription drugs or of health care in general. But they won't bring down the costs by one cent. What they can do is impose price controls -- and price controls have a centuries-long track record of creating worse problems than they solve.

Rent control has led to housing shortages in Europe, Asia, Australia and North America. Price controls on food have led to hunger in 17th century Italy, 18th century India, 20th century Russia -- and in many other places and times.

When politicians talk about bringing down the cost of prescription drugs they are exploiting a widespread confusion between prices and costs. Prices are not costs. Prices are what pay for costs -- and if you don't pay those costs, you are not going to keep on getting what you want.

From the Rocky Mountain News, a bitch-slap of a column: Bribe for greedy geezers:

This bill is essentially a $400 billion bribe, designed to buy votes in next year's election. At a time when it has become more obvious than ever that the Medicare program is destined to bankrupt the federal treasury, this bill features no structural reforms, no real means testing, and no economic logic.

It is, in fact, the purest sort of political thievery, taking the wages of the working poor (Medicare is the most regressive tax program in the federal budget) and giving them to a politically powerful bloc of voters, without regard to who among those voters needs or deserves a piece of this spectacularly unjust giveaway.

There's an old saying that if you find yourself stuck in a hole, the first you should do is to stop digging. The projected shortfall for Medicare alone is $33 trillion (that's 33,000 billion dollars). So, we have no idea what to do, so Bush and Congress decide to keep on digging even faster.