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Drug benefit may cost $1.2 trillion
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Feb 09, 2005 12:32pm |
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| Category | Analysis |
| Media | Newspaper - Boston Globe |
| News Date | Wednesday, February 9, 2005 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The White House released budget figures yesterday indicating that the new Medicare prescription drug benefit will cost more than $1.2 trillion over the coming decade, a much higher price tag than President Bush suggested when he narrowly won passage of the law in late 2003.
The disclosure prompted new criticism by Democrats about the administration's long-term budget estimates. It also showed that Medicare, the medical insurance program for seniors, may pose a far more serious budgetary problem in the coming decade than concerns about the solvency of Social Security.
At a hearing yesterday of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, criticized Treasury Secretary John Snow for the rhetorical discrepancies.
''The crisis exists in what's happened to Medicare by weighing it down," Emanuel said. ''Those of us who told you it was going to cost twice as much were right."
At the recent confirmation hearing of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, Senate Budget Committee chairman Judd Gregg pressed the administration to hold down the cost of the prescription drug program to the $400 billion that Bush had originally promised. |
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