White House's Medicare Plan Expands Focus on Drug Benefit
WASHINGTON -- The White House is putting final touches on a framework for overhauling Medicare that would make a prescription-drug benefit much more widely available than first envisioned.</br></br>The plan, outlined in a private meeting on Capitol Hill by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, is designed to be the starting point for House and Senate deliberations on the issue.</br></br>The administration is leaving many of the specific details to Congress, including how to structure the politically sensitive proposal. But it appears to have backed away from an earlier plan that would have required beneficiaries of Medicare, the federal health-care insurance program for people aged 65 and over and the disabled, to switch to private insurance if they wanted to receive a drug benefit.</br></br>Mr. Bush is expected to unveil the White House framework soon, perhaps as early as next week when he is scheduled to address the American Medical Association. The plan, beyond establishing the principles for a drug benefit, calls for changes that would increase the role of private health plans in the federal insurance program for the elderly and disabled. Mr. Bush anticipates the combined changes would cost about $400 billion during the next decade.</br></br>The decision to focus on a broad framework, and not details, reflects a major shift in strategy by the White House. In early January, Bush aides had hoped to write a comprehensive plan and let the president drive the debate on an issue that has split Republicans and Democrats in the past two elections.