The $400 billion price tag for prescription drug coverage is a laugh. Every other entitlement ever enacted has grotesquely outgrown all predictions made for it when it was enacted. Universal prescription drug coverage will be no exception.

Over half of the elderly on Medicare are already covered for prescription drugs by various existing programs and private insurance. Include partial coverage, and that number rises to 72 percent. A rational person, truly interested in helping the elderly, would propose a means-based program to help those who really need it. Democrats are not interested in this approach. Not enough votes and power. Ted Kennedy has sworn violent opposition to any program targeted to the poor and needy.

Entitlements currently eat over half the Federal budget each year. In 2004, Medicare and Medicaid alone will cost five times the $87 billion price tag for rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan next year*. And that entitlement cost will also be there in 2005. And 2010. And 2020. Trillion after trillion. Forever. Or more realistically, until collapse.

Any attempt to privatize, or otherwise modify entitlements in any way, is opposed by the Left, who see this as a way to demonize the opposition. What do they care that 99 percent of the debt hole the nation will be in someday will be due to entitlements? It's not as bad as losing an election.

I don't see a way out of this. If Bush goes back on prescription drug coverage, the Democrats will gleefully rip his head off at the roots. The creed of the Democrat: If you don't want the Federal government to do it, you don't want it done. Heck, many liberals honestly believe that if the government doesn't do it, it is impossible for it to get done.

Nobody can propose modifying entitlements without immediately being accused of wanting to make the elderly into Soylent Green. That's what you're thinking about me right now, aren't you?

*Did you notice that, as I predicted, the $87 billion would be assigned solely to Iraq by the opposition, even though that isn't true?