“It takes courage for politicians to fight powerful special-interest rate groups. The reform of the Medicare prescription drug benefit will provide a clear test as to whether the Democratic Congressional leadership has enough backbone to stand up for the public good and follow through on one of its most important campaign promises. The basic story here is simple. When the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2003, it deliberately structured the benefit so as to ensure that the drug industry and the insurance industry would be able to profit at the expense of beneficiaries and taxpayers. They wrote the law so that only private insurers would be able to offer the drug benefit; Medicare was prohibiting from offering its own plan. … Congress also explicitly prohibited Medicare from directly negotiating prices with the pharmaceutical industry.” (11/30/06)