"
But nowhere is the corruption more glaring than in the Medicare Part D disaster passed in the dark of night in November of 2003 after a 3-hour vote—the longest recorded vote in the history of the United States. The bill created a Medicare drug benefit that relied on private companies.
Republicans claimed privatization would give beneficiaries more choices and that competition among private plans would keep program costs down. 
This $80 billion price-tag is based on two specific provisions where Republicans sold out seniors for their industry contributors.
First, they created a confusing web of competing and inefficient private plans run by private insurers—who receive huge $ub$idie$ from the federal government—that beneficiaries must choose from, rather than a simple stand-alone benefit run by Medicare. The low overhead costs of a
single administrating agency could save $4.8 billion annually.
Second, they made it
illegal for the federal government to negotiate the price of drugs with manufacturers, despite the fact every
other industrialized nation negotiates these prices. When the government
does negotiate lower prices for bulk drug purchases,
as does the Veterans Administration, it saves more than 40 percent compared to the market cost. Applied to Medicare, this would save about $560 billion over the first eight years of the program. The cost of the disastrous Medicare plan is even greater when the subsidies given to insurance companies are factored in."
