Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Just how expensive is the Medicare drug benefit?
[Amy Goldstein, "Official Says He Was Told To Withhold Medicare Data," The Washington Post, 13 March 2004.]
New information surfaces about the true cost of expanding Medicare entitlements to include prescription drugs:
The government's longtime chief analyst of Medicare costs said yesterday that Bush administration officials threatened to fire him last year if he disclosed to Congress that he believed the prescription drug legislation favored by the White House would prove far more expensive than lawmakers had been told.
Richard S. Foster, a nonpartisan Department of Health and Human Services official who has been Medicare's chief actuary for nine years, said he nearly resigned in protest because he thought the top Medicare administrator, and perhaps White House officials, were acting against the public interest by withholding information about how much changes to the program would cost.
"Certainly, Congress did not have all the information they might have wanted, or that we had," Foster said in an interview.
Bush had said he was willing to spend as much as $400 billion for the drug benefits and other Medicare changes during the next decade, and the Congressional Budget Office, the official fiscal advisers to Congress, predicted the law would cost $395 billion.
In late January, the White House said calculations provided by Foster, indicated the law would cost $534 billion. That provoked an outcry from Democrats and conservative Republicans concerned that the drug benefits would deepen the federal deficit.
Internal documents and federal officials made clear that the White House had known of the higher cost estimates for months. Until now, it has not been apparent the lengths to which Bush aides who negotiated the bill with Congress went to keep the figures private.
[Amy Goldstein, "Official Says He Was Told To Withhold Medicare Data," The Washington Post, 13 March 2004.]
New information surfaces about the true cost of expanding Medicare entitlements to include prescription drugs:
The government's longtime chief analyst of Medicare costs said yesterday that Bush administration officials threatened to fire him last year if he disclosed to Congress that he believed the prescription drug legislation favored by the White House would prove far more expensive than lawmakers had been told.
Richard S. Foster, a nonpartisan Department of Health and Human Services official who has been Medicare's chief actuary for nine years, said he nearly resigned in protest because he thought the top Medicare administrator, and perhaps White House officials, were acting against the public interest by withholding information about how much changes to the program would cost.
"Certainly, Congress did not have all the information they might have wanted, or that we had," Foster said in an interview.
Bush had said he was willing to spend as much as $400 billion for the drug benefits and other Medicare changes during the next decade, and the Congressional Budget Office, the official fiscal advisers to Congress, predicted the law would cost $395 billion.
In late January, the White House said calculations provided by Foster, indicated the law would cost $534 billion. That provoked an outcry from Democrats and conservative Republicans concerned that the drug benefits would deepen the federal deficit.
Internal documents and federal officials made clear that the White House had known of the higher cost estimates for months. Until now, it has not been apparent the lengths to which Bush aides who negotiated the bill with Congress went to keep the figures private.
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