Aren’t omnibus spending bills *fun*?
An obscure provision slipped into a $120 billion Iraq spending bill in May threatens to leave some poor and disabled Medicaid recipients without prescription drugs in October.
In a case of unintended consequences, Congress inserted a rule cracking down on Medicaid fraud that requires that all non-electronic prescriptions for Medicaid patients be written on tamper-resistant paper.
(from USA Today)
Apparently it was *so* important to shovel another US$120 billion into the gaping maws of the friends and families of the B*sh junta that the (Democratic-controlled, ahem) congress didn't bother to think about some of the little surprises that got taped onto the porkbarrel funding bill. You'd think that the thing to do would be (modulo looking at the US$120 billion porkbarrel, then scraping US$20 billion off the top and dumping it into different government programs that actually make this country safer. Properly funding Medicaid would be a good start, of course, but some of that money could be used to do things like, um, hire enough inspectors to properly test Chinese toy/gadget/food imports for the dozen or so deadly poisons that have just sort of managed to come sailing in across the border unfettered by the iron hand of regulation) would be to take an erasor to the federal rule that limits payments to public hospitals (and, knowing the B*sh junta, ONLY public hospitals, because those for-profit privately owned hospitals can't be allowed to not get every available subsidy from the federal coffers. After all, if a for-profit hospital couldn't charge US$1100 for a bottle of aspirin, someone wouldn't be able to fill their swimming pool with gold ingots) instead of being "forced" to hunt around for another marginal (and by marginal, I mean "unable to bribe members of congress") group to put the boot to.
But that would make sense, and would involve a careful reading of the bill. And that would cut into the more-important job of pressing the voting button, then going to lunch with a insurance company lobbyist.