Prescription-drug benefits: two ways of looking at it

Recently, we have received some comments about the tone of our articles. In response, I have prepared two versions of this post. Please tell me which one you prefer — or if they both suck, then say so.

With vitriol
Every morning, I am pestered by an old man driving his enormous car. Right after an old lady says in a hectoring voice, “Don’t come home without passing a prescription drug benefit!”, my tormentor comes on the television and says in a grating voice, “When ya gonna get it duuun?”
The commercial is from some group promoting the giveaway of free medication to undeserving old people. “That’s not fair!” I hear from the back. “We need those drugs to stay alive! You whippersnapers will be old someday! You’ll need this!” We’ll see about that.
Meanwhile, there’s something a little unseemly about providing $400 billion of medication to any senior citizen on demand, though retirees making more than $80,000 a year have to pay a little more. So if you’re a married couple in your late 60s, own your own home, have no kids in the house, and make $75k, you get drugs from the feds.
If you take nothing else away from this post, remember: the prescription-drug bill isn’t for the truly indigent. The Church teaches that we should place the needs of the poor, sick, and vulnerable ahead of everyone else’s. That’s not what this bill will do. Medicare — along with Social Security and student loans — is middle-class welfare. And it’s a lot worse than regular welfare: you at least have to prove you’re poor to get that. To get Medicare, you only need to prove that you’re over 65.
I’ll let my 4-year-old son Charlie have the last word on the subject. Paige and I were talking about this subject at the breakfast table a few days ago, and Charlie heard me say “they’re taking our money whether they need it or not.” He looked shocked, and asked, “Who is taking our money?”
“Well, there are some people who want to get the government to take our money so they can buy stuff for themselves.”
“But that’s stealing!” he said indignantly. Yep.
100% vitriol-free
Every day, I wake up and think, “God, is there any way you could make the government take more money from my paycheck? Because I’d probably squander it on food or clothing for my three young kids, or save it for our retirement.” Luckily, there’s a government program in the works that will give lots of free medication to cute, deserving old people. Whom we should cherish and love.
Still, I have just the teensiest, weensiest issue with one small, probably insignificant aspect of the Medicare prescription-drug benefit bill. It seems that not everyone — and by “not everyone,” I mean “probably three or four people” — is unable to pay for his medication, and might — and by “might,” I mean “in all likelihood, I’m probably wrong” — be able to contribute a tiny bit more money for their medicines. And by “tiny,” I mean “five bucks or so.”
Yet I know that taking money from us younger people is the will of God and His Servant, Ted Kennedy. I love this day. I shall now go outside and roll in the grass and think of fuzzy bunnies.