[dragonwriter]

> An expansion of social security / medicare (particularly if they were paying into a health savings account throughout their low risk period) to cover drugs and such would have been quite a bit cheaper.

You act as if an expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drugs was an alternative to the more recent reforms, rather something that already happened prior to them and did not, as you suggest, address the problem that the more recent reforms were aimed at.

[protomyth]

The changes made are woefully inadequate for, among other things, cancer drugs. They didn't fix or even make a good attempt at the problem.