Mysterious Fax Adds to Intrigue Over the Medicare Bill's Cost
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/18/politics/18MEDI.html?hpBy SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and ROBERT PEAR
Published: March 18, 2004
WASHINGTON, March 17 — Late one Friday afternoon in January, after the House of Representatives had adjourned for the week, Cybele Bjorklund, a House Democratic health policy aide, heard the buzz of the fax machine at her desk. Coming over the transom, with no hint of the sender, was a document she had been seeking for months: an estimate by Medicare's chief actuary showing the cost of prescription drug benefits for the elderly.
Dated June 11, 2003, the document put the cost at $551.5 billion over 10 years. It appeared to confirm what Ms. Bjorklund and her bosses on the House Ways and Means Committee had long suspected: the actuary, Richard S. Foster, had concluded the legislation would be far more expensive than Congress's $400 billion estimate — and had kept quiet while lawmakers voted on the bill and President Bush signed it into law.
Ms. Bjorklund had been pressing Mr. Foster for his numbers since June. When he refused, telling her he could be fired, she said, she confronted his boss, Thomas A. Scully, then the Medicare administrator. "If Rick Foster gives that to you," Ms. Bjorklund remembered Mr. Scully telling her, "I'll fire him so fast his head will spin." Mr. Scully denies making such threats.
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At a hearing on Feb. 10, Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, told lawmakers that "we knew all along" that the administration's cost estimates would be higher, but said he did not have a final figure, of $534 billion, until Dec. 24, after the bill was signed into law. Nonetheless, Mr. Thompson said he and Mr. Scully had shared their estimates with House and Senate negotiators and with the White House throughout the legislative process.
"There were individuals in the White House who knew that our preliminary estimates were higher," Mr. Thompson testified.
Yet as late as November, Mr. Scully continued to cite the $400 billion figure, which came from the Congressional Budget Office. In a letter to The New York Times published on Nov. 20, Mr. Scully wrote, "We are spending $400 billion."
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other related news:Inquiry Set on Bribery Claim in Medicare Vote
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/18/politics/18BRIB.htmlBy SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: March 18, 2004
WASHINGTON, March 17 — The House ethics committee voted on Wednesday to start a formal investigation into accusations of bribery surrounding last November's vote on the Medicare prescription drug law, signaling that an initial fact-finding inquiry might have produced evidence of wrongdoing.
The panel, formally known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, met behind closed doors. Afterward, it issued a statement saying it had established an investigative subcommittee to conduct "a full and complete inquiry" into the bribery claims. The accusations were made by Representative Nick Smith, Republican of Michigan.
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But Mr. Smith's accusation provoked an outcry from Democrats, including Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip. In January, Mr. Hoyer sent a letter to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, urging him to seek an inquiry. At the time, Mr. Hoyer said that if Mr. Hastert did not ask for an investigation, a Democrat would initiate one.
Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority leader, accused the Democrats of promoting an ethics investigation for political reasons.
"I think what they are doing is very, very dangerous," Mr. DeLay said then.
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