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To: el paradisio who wrote (55494)	6/28/2000 11:02:00 AM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 99985

el paradisio:Re: when to buy Drug Stocks: Answer: Soon, when PIG HEAVEN gets here; That will be as soon; as soon as the 250 Billion Dollar Government check gets signed. Republicans and Democrats are all for it. Make sure you add that to your CPI because I don't think it's going to star in the BLS's CPI ( Heinz may want to confirm this -g- ). It is important to understand how much is 250 Billion?. Let me try and explain. 250 Bill is 15 times larger ( ie, 1500% larger )than the 15 bill dollar MEASLY increase in Medicare payment given to US Hospitals in the 2000 Budget last Dec 1999. It was a bitterly fought budget with hospitals begging because they where going out of business. ( they did go out of business; many have since then; ). So we sweated over a measly 15 bill. Now we are glibly going to spend 250 Bill of money WE DON'T YET HAVE. ie If the Economy tanks in the nest 10 years the surplus is history. TA -------- Surplus Alarm Wall Streeet Journal June 28 2000 Review & Outlook Editorial American politicians spent 20 years telling voters to worry about the budget deficits the pols themselves had created. Well, it's time to start worrying about the booming federal surplus that the pols are now celebrating. Whatever else it did, that old devil deficit was at least a restraint on the growth of government. The surplus, we are now discovering, is political grease for the revival and expansion of the entitlement state. And neither political party in Washington wants voters to notice. As you'd expect, President Clinton is the undisputed master of this new fiscal sleight-of-hand. Only weeks ago he was denouncing George W. Bush's tax cut as "irresponsible" because the surplus wasn't large enough. But by this past Monday he could no longer deny the reality of an extra $1.3 trillion -- yes trillion -- in excess federal revenues. The 10-year surplus estimate is now about $4.2 trillion, including about $2.3 trillion in Social Security payroll taxes. interactive.wsj.com Mr. Clinton's response has been to propose new ways to spend this windfall. He's now offering seniors a prescription-drug free lunch, to the tune of $250 billion. And that's by his almost certain epic underestimate. Republicans in Congress aren't much better. Their appropriators are busy spending money at a faster rate than Democrats did in the early 1990s. Domestic discretionary spending will rise by about 7% this fiscal year, with another 7% to 8% in the cards for Fiscal 2001. This is triple the rate of inflation. The surplus has put the Beltway in pig heaven. The Fiscal 2001 appropriations bills are heading past a record $600 billion, despite only modest increases in defense spending. Senate allocations for the Labor/HHS/Education bill alone hit $100 billion, a 15.9% increase. Senators Ted Stevens and Arlen Specter are also ramming down GOP Leader Trent Lott's throat an extra $15 billion or so in a "supplemental" spending bill this year. It's worse in the House. Speaker Dennis Hastert has joined the lobbying of Mr. Lott on supplemental spending. And he's signed off on a GOP version of free prescription drugs that is almost as spendthrift as, and only slightly less bureaucratic than, Mr. Clinton's. These columns have noted that Medicare ought to provide drug coverage for seniors. Most private-sector insurance plans already do. The reason Medicare doesn't is because it is run by a bureaucracy that hasn't adapted with the times. Offering a new drug entitlement without reforming Medicare's command-and-control structure is the short road to the health system of Canada or France. Subsidized demand will soar, leading to runaway costs, which will sooner or later induce the feds to impose price controls on drugs. Drug innovation will slow or stop, much as it has in Europe. On this score, we hope Republicans don't fall for Mr. Clinton's sucker bait of trading a drug entitlement for his signature on marriage-penalty tax relief. The poll-watching President will sign marriage-penalty repeal in any event, and if he doesn't, Al Gore will pay the price. As for drugs, this is a serious issue best left for a new President who cares more about policy than the politics. Which brings us to the only good surplus news: It is removing any political excuse for failing to cut taxes, massively and across-the-board. Mr. Bush's proposal to reduce marginal rates to 33% from 39.6% may now even be too small, considering the new surplus's size. The federal tax burden is at a peacetime record of 20.5% of GDP, and without urgent tax relief it will rise. The Clinton-Gore alternative to tax cutting is supposedly to "eliminate" the national debt by 2012, but this is a sham. The Social Security surplus will by definition reduce debt, if it isn't spent by Congress first. In any case, the debt is already shrinking rapidly as a share of the booming economy. The bottom-line irony here is the surplus may soon jeopardize the boom that produced it. By providing cover for pols to grow the government, the surplus is creating tax-and-spend burdens that sooner or later will hurt the economy. A tax cut is the only way to stop the politicians from spending us back into deficits. ================================== Message #55494 from el paradisio at Jun 27, 2000 5:59 PM ET OTTA,still 1+1 is not equal 2. Here,we have 17.4% <Spending on prescription drugs in the U.S. rose a record 17.4% last year, with seniors over age 70 hardest hit by rising drug prices, according to a new analysis by a big pharmacy-benefit manager.> Here,we have 13.7% <For instance, the price of two popular hormone-replacement drugs -- Premarin and Prempro, both made by American Home Products Corp. -- rose 12.1% in 1999, according to the study. The price of Glucophage for diabetes, from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., increased 14.5%, while Serevent, an antiasthmatic from Glaxo Wellcome PLC, rose 14.6%.> 17.4% + 13.7%=31.1% And the stock price of AHP is still the same in last 12 month and BMY is minus 30%. el