Nobody’s put it better. The comment spotlights just how ridiculous one new Medicare venture is.

“Asking Uncle Sam to pay for the romance of 76 million baby boomers will quicken the impending collapse of Medicare,” says Tom Schatz, president of a taxpayer watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste. Viagra and similar drugs via Medicare?

We’re talking lifestyle here, not life-saving.

New Medicare prescription coverage begins next Jan. 1 and it is expected to cost more than $500 billion in the next decade. We’re told that drugs for problems such as high blood pressure and heart disease and prescriptions for the erectile dysfunction commodity of Viagra will be tightly controlled. Does $500 billion sound like tight control?

That amounts to about two years’ worth of added involvement in Iraq — where in recent times something like $9 billion in reconstruction seems to have been “misplaced.” How much will be written off for sex enhancement?

Pfizer’s Viagra, Bayer’s Levitra and Eli Lilly’s Cialis are used mainly to alter erectile unwillingness. Now we get the report that Viagra MAY also prove useful in treating enlarged hearts that can result from high blood pressure.

Conservatives say the new plan puts Congress and not doctors in the position of deciding which drugs should be covered. Do you want Congress ruling what you should and shouldn’t have and what you need and don’t need ? Doctors have a tough enough time figuring that out. Uncertain as that may be, do we now let politicians overrule even the medics?

What kind of “universal entitlement” are we talking about here?

This Viagra-via-Medicare venture fits into the same stupid category as a health plan that allows military people and their families to get cosmetic surgery, not corrective surgery, mind you, which includes breast enhancements, liposuction, derriere rearrangement and nose jobs. This is an elective process, not a matter of dire need.

Erectile dysfunction may be a problem that concerns many, but it is something that should be dealt with on a personal basis, not with federal funds. Baby boomers and their elders have done a lot for the country and will do a lot more. Let’s just hope that doesn’t include draining the health care coffers for sexual enjoyment purposes.