To: Benchman who wrote (554241 ) 3/21/2004 12:41:38 AM From: zonkie Read Replies (2) | Respond to <As far as the medicare bill goes. Why did congress pass it if it was too expensive? Maybe Bush felt that it would cost 400 billion in the form that he originally proposed the bill, but then congress changed it, so it ended up more expensive. >Bush administration threatened to fire Medicare’s chief actuary if he revealed to Congress that the administration’s own cost estimates for the Medicare prescription drug legislation were more than $100 billion higher than the figure provided Congress. Congress narrowly passed the Medicare drug bill in November based on the lower cost estimate, which swayed several wavering lawmakers concerned about the bill’s cost. According to news reports, several Bush administration estimates pegged the cost of the bill at more than $500 billion, but lawmakers were told the cost was $395 billion, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. In June 2003, five months before Congress approved the bill, then-Medicare Director Thomas A. Scully told Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, that Foster would be fired if he revealed the administration’s estimates to Congress. (Before his appointment to head Medicare, Scully was a health-industry lobbyist, and after the Medicare drug bill passed Congress, he joined a law firm that represents health insurers and hospitals.) Before the bill passed the House by just five votes in November, more than a dozen Republican members threatened to vote against it if the cost were greater than $400 billion. In January 2004, the Bush administration admitted the drug bill would cost at least $534 billion aflcio.org
