Word: reformer
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Breaux: Medicare should cover prescription drugs, but you have to reform the program. Prescription drugs would be provided through a competitive model. Again, that's what we have in the federal employees' plan. I have insurance that covers my prescription drugs. To give you an example, my father, who is on Medicare, and I walk into the same drugstore and buy the same prescription. The retail price of the drug is $100. My father will have to pay $100 because Medicare doesn't cover prescription drugs. But I get a volume discount in the federal plan, which will bring...
...Asia's governments to ease the pain would be to finish cleaning up the mess left over from the 1997 debacle. In Thailand, many companies that ran into problems still haven't repaid their loans, leaving banks unwilling to lend to more viable firms. Korea has done more to reform its profligate ways but the government still props up sick companies with state funds, discouraging the kind of restructuring that would create more competitive businesses. Taiwan sailed through the crisis in 1997, but it is now reckoning with a Thai-style banking fiasco, albeit a less serious one. Taiwanese banks...
...Even if technology took off again in the U.S., lack of reform is likely to keep growth rates in much of Asia slow for a long time. How long could depend on the one country in the neighborhood that is not in bad shape: China. The forecasts for China's future are a bit like harried traffic cops on Shanghai's streets pointing in two directions at the same time. The nation is not nearly as vulnerable to export slumps because its own consumers are spending like mad on everything from cars to vacations at Angkor Wat. That could well...
...Japan has pinned its hopes on Koizumi. He'll need all the support he can muster. His proposals for reform range from updating securities laws to overhauling the judicial system. He wants to eradicate bad bank debts in under three years and create 5 million jobs in five years. Some economists accuse him being vague on specifics but credit him for having the right ideas. His fiercest opposition comes from within his own party. LDP bureaucrats fear losing access to government funds from which they've long doled out political patronage. Koizumi needs a big election victory to quiet...
...Ordinary taxpayers acknowledge that economic reform is the only way out of Japan's bind, a view the West has pushed all along. "It's like you're in the final stages of a fatal disease and someone comes along with a potential cure," says Bill Wilder, head of the Japanese arm of Fidelity Investments. "You don't know if it'll work or if it won't, but you've got no choice." Some worry Koizumi is trying too much, too soon. "He's promised structural reforms, along with clearing up bank loans and cutting government debt...