CongressDaily: "Analysts: If Reforms Pass, Medicare Faces Midlife Crisis"By Julie Rovner for CongressDaily AM Report
July 31, 2003
At a press session sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, Centrists.Org's Jeff Lemieux had nice things to say about the bipartisanship evident in the Senate's Medicare bill, and many features of the House Medicare bill, including the discount card and "transitional" low-income assistance, the chronic care initiatives, and the gradual move toward premium formulas modeled on those of the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program. However, like most economists and think tank wonks, he had a strongly negative reaction to the stand-alone drug benefit, which both bills would implement in 2006.
Excerpt:
HEALTH
Analysts: If Reforms Pass, Medicare Faces Midlife Crisis
...Policy analysts from across the spectrum
agree that both the House and Senate versions of the bill would
cause serious problems if either became law....
...Even analysts from the center have something to hate. Jeff
Lemieux of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute and the
fledgling think tank Centrists.org, told a briefing at the
Heritage Foundation this week that his biggest concern is with
the private "stand-alone" drug benefit envisioned in both the
House and Senate bills, which he calls "butt-ugly" and something
"no economist and few analysts would design."
It was designed, Lemieux said, three years ago by House
Republicans "who didn't really care if it worked," but instead
"wanted something that looked good in the newspapers." The
Senate ended up staying with the concept "because it was the
only thing that was teed up."
Now, he said, Republicans still do not care if it works.
"They just want to get it off the table for the next election,"
said Lemieux, while liberal Democrats hope it will fail "so
we'll end up with the trillion dollar benefit they wanted in the
first place." By Julie Rovner
