Senate putting $12 billion more into Medicare bill

back

Want to support Global Action on Aging?

Click below:

Thanks!

Senate putting $12 billion more into Medicare bill

Reuters Health, June 24, 2003

WASHINGTON - The lead sponsor of the Senate Medicare prescription drug bill said on Monday he hoped to use at least half of the $12 billion available to beef up the measure to encourage more health plans to participate.

The bill came in below its $400 billion 10-year budget, giving lawmakers an extra $12 billion to use.

One possibility, not yet finalized, is to put half the money into encouraging employers to keep providing health coverage to retirees and put the other half into encouraging more Preferred Provider Organizations, or PPOs, to venture into Medicare, Senate Finance Committee chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, told reporters.

Some Senate conservatives would like to tilt the Medicare bill more toward the private sector as President Bush did in an earlier version proposed this year.

They hope to use the amendment process and any extra available money to achieve that goal.

However some Democrats are reluctant to give private plans an edge in competing against traditional government-run Medicare, wanting to make sure that seniors can keep the health care they have now and still get the new drug benefit.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who played a pivotal role in negotiating the bipartisan compromise, said it was based on the concept of "a level playing field between Medicare and private plans."

"What conservative Republicans are now trying to do is rig the system in a way that will coerce seniors away from Medicare and into private plans," Kennedy said.

The Senate debated various Medicare amendments on Monday but took no action. Senate leaders still expect it to pass later this week with a broad bipartisan margin, breaking a prolonged impasse on adding the drug benefit to the federal program that covers all Americans from age 65 and about six million disabled people.

The House of Representatives takes up Medicare legislation later this week, although the Republican-authored bill is less likely to get bipartisan support there.

President Bush, in a speech to a biotechnology conference, urged Congress to pass a bill that includes a role for private sector plans and increased choices by seniors.