Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

It's a good thing the executives of the pharmaceutical industry have unfettered access to cholesterol-fighting drugs, because the Republican-controlled Congress just handed their companies enough Medicaid-related pork to give the bastards heart conditions.

What am I saying? Those sociopathic f**ks don't have hearts.

As part of a House budget bill that reduces spending on Medicaid prescription drugs, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. and other businesses secured a provision ensuring that their mental health drugs continue to fetch top price at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the states.

The provision -- inserted by Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), whose district flanks Lilly's Indianapolis headquarters -- would largely exempt antipsychotic and antidepressant medications from a larger measure designed to steer Medicaid patients to the least expensive treatment options.

At a time when states are seeing less federal dollars due to the Bush Junta's tax cuts for the wealthy, a time when many people on Medicaid have to choose between buying food or buying medication, after five years of medication costs not just rising but skyrocketing past inflation, the GOP decides to show "compassion" to a multi-billion dollar industry, wrecking millions of live in the process.

How is it that Congressional Republicans haven't been lynched yet?