Trading Ketchup for a Vegetable and Food Stamps for Prescription Drugs

Some of you may remember when the Regan Administration tried to use ketchup as a vegetable in school lunches. Well, the Republicans have done it again. Yesterday I read that because our elderly will now have access to a prescription drug program, their food stamp allocations will be reduced, since they will now have more money to buy food with.

Hasn't someone forgotten that one of the reasons the prescription drug program was adopted was that so many elderly had to choose between food and prescription drugs? To alleviate this choice, the need was for an additional, not an equivalent, benefit.

Now the choice faced by our elderly is even starker. If they select the benefit plan, they will do without the food, and if they don't, they will be no better off than they were before the program was enacted.

Republicans are very good at this taking away what they have just given. And they then use the resultant failure of the programs as evidence that federal programs don't work.

When publicized, the Regan Administration was embarrassed into reversing its policy. But I haven't heard any hue and cry over the new policy. I wonder why? (5/10/2005)

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