Kudos to Bruce Bartlett for pointing out that today’s conservatives have forgotten that big business is often the enemy of free markets. Big business seeks special privileges from the state to protect their market, create new demands for their product, or make the taxpayers subsidize their operating costs. As Bartlett points out, the Medicare drug bill is a perfect example of the latter. The “business community” supported the bill because they want to make the taxpayer pick up the costs of providing prescription drugs to the retired employees of major corporations. Now, thanks to the “free-market” GOP, business can either dump their retires into Medicare or receive taxpayer subsidizes for providing retire medical benefits.