Dan Diamond of California Healthline points out that a major piece of entitlement legislation was repealed once before: the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988.

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Such a sanction is catastrophic because via coverage under Medicare, Medicaid and sales to the Veterans Administration, the government is the largest customer for drug companies.

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They are prey for the unscrupulous--from those peddling nonexistent coverage to pharmaceutical firms that offer cash or in-kind drug assistance specifically to lure old people to a particular plan or help push them out of the doughnut hole and into catastrophic coverage, so that Medicare picks up almost the whole tab.

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