Medicare Drug Estimate Jumps Again (Now $576 Billion)

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON - "President Bush promised Congress that his Medicare prescription drug benefit would cost no more than $400 billion over 10 years, but once the legislation was enacted, federal actuaries boosted the estimate to $534 billion. Now, Bush administration projections indicate that the cost could be considerably higher.

According to internal White House budget office estimates of the long-term cost of Medicare, spending related to the new drug benefit could increase by $42 billion over the coming decade.

The revised figure appears in a chart prepared during this summer's "midsession review" by the Office of Management and Budget and Medicare actuaries. The document provides a detailed breakdown of an extra $176 billion in Medicare spending projected for the next 10 years. The chart, provided to the Washington Post late last week, identifies $42 billion of that increase "as related to MMA," the initials of the Medicare Modernization Act, the new prescription drug law.

Several budget analysts said the chart indicates that the price tag of the president's new drug program could total as much as $576 billion over 10 years."

EDIT

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/nation/9708442.htm

[amandabeech]

1. How much would this cost if Medicare could negotiate

discount prices with the drug companies and subsidies for private HMO's, etc., were dropped.

Has anyone seen any numbers?

[dennis4868]

2. Damn, if Clinton....

tried to pull this scam off he would have been impeached and sent to prison to die.....and what does the media do about this Bush fraud? They go after Dan Rather for being dishonest....

up is down, down is up!

:crazy: