Should drug entitlement be GOP legacy?

Negotiators from the House and Senate last week completed work on a bill to create a Medicare prescription drug benefit. With an estimated cost of more than $400 billion over the next ten years, and far more than that in subsequent years when the Baby Boom generation moves into retirement, the bill proposes the biggest new federal entitlement since the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.

Is this the legacy that Republicans want for the first Republican controlled government in five decades? HUMAN EVENTS Assistant Editor David Freddoso put that question to Republican senators.

Do you want the gravestone for this session, once it is over, to read, "This Republican government created the biggest new entitlement since LBJ"-the prescription drug entitlement?

SEN. GEORGE ALLEN (R.-VA.): A gravestone? [Laughs] On the prescription drug Medicare bill, the Republicans, the leadership, the President of the United States and others said that it wanted to come to adopt and put into law a reasonable prescription drug plan as well as strengthen and improve Medicare. And we believe in keeping our promises. . . . Many have run [for office] making promises to strengthen and improve Medicare with the prescription drug benefit. . . . In the event this actually passes and becomes law, there will be those who say it's not enough. However, it does cover those who are happy to make decisions in choosing between eating or food versus prescription drugs. For others if they don't like it they can stick with whatever plan they currently have.

In principle, doesn't it seem like this goes in a direction that is different from what the whole 1994 election was about-wanting to get rid of entitlements, to end this dependency on government?

ALLEN: Well, but this is giving some other options, if we can get this Medical Savings Account passed. . .

That's watered down in the conference version.

ALLEN: But it's a toehold. It's a big improvement and that's to me exactly consistent with all of our principles. . . .Is it as much reform as everyone would like? No. But [I'm] not sure if we will have enough [votes] for this ultimately anyway, and the Democrats will block it because they hate the Medical Savings Accounts, they hate the private options and so forth. So, we will see how it works out.

For the first time in decades we are finishing a congressional session with a Republican Congress and a Republican President. Do you want the legacy of this Congress to be that it created a huge new entitlement, the prescription drug entitlement?

SEN. SAM BROWNBACK (R.-KAN.): Well, there is a prescription drug benefit issue, there are also the reforms in it to try to strengthen and to put Medicare on a path it can be sustained for years. . . .If that together is part of the legacy, that is a good legacy. A lot of people are questioning: Are the reforms sufficient? And the look of it appears to be that they are pretty strong. I have not gotten through the language yet, so I can't comment at that point. . . .

They are expecting a $400 billion price tag over ten years, and . . . Medicare is already going bankrupt over time. So how are the reforms going to. . . .

BROWNBACK: A number of us supported a provision to cap the expense of it at $400 billion. If it goes over that, rescissions must be made. I don't know if that made it into in the final version or not. Because it's been very problematic in the past, knowing exactly what something costs.

For the first time in 50 years we have a Republican Congress and a Republican President. Do you want the monument to this session to say, "This was the Republican government that created the biggest new entitlement since Johnson"-the Medicare prescription drugs plan?

SEN. LARRY CRAIG (R.-IDAHO): Or you can say this is the Congress that faced a Medicare program that is ballooning out of control and has created competitive forces in it that will allow the free market to begin to contain and hold prices down. As an advocate of Medical Savings Accounts, which has always been limited by the liberals, it is now wide open. It is probably the most significant reform for the private sector in health care in 50 years. . . .. I am going to vote for this bill. . . .We can either look at it as major reform or a step in the right direction that will get better over time. And if we keep electing conservative forces to Congress those steps will all be in the right direction

Do you think this bill will actually decrease government dependency?

CRAIG: It has that possibility. . . . There are at least four factors in this bill that defy those who believe in a federalized health care system. Means testing-first time ever. Premium payments. Deductibles. All those kinds of things are in here. . . . So there are other ways of looking at it besides calling it the largest entitlement ever.

For the first time in about five decades we are going to finish a congressional session with a Republican Congress and a Republican President. Do you want the legacy of that session to be that it created the biggest new entitlement since Lyndon Johnson-the prescription drug benefit?

SEN. JAMES INHOFE (R.-OKLA.): Would I personally want that to be the legacy? I wouldn't. . . . I would say this is something that has been neglected for a long time the Democrats have tried to do it. They've been unsuccessful. The Republicans may not like the end product. It may be more of an entitlement than many of us would like, but at least something is getting done.

Are you going to vote for it?

INHOFE: I haven't seen it yet.

The principle of somebody else paying for my parents' drugs, does that-

INHOFE: See, what I don't like in the drug program is one that takes care of problems that don't exist. If my parents were not on Medicare, and they had something they thought was perfectly adequate, we don't have need for the government to come along and try to change it. So, I would have to look carefully to see if that's what this is doing. If it is, then maybe I wouldn't support it. So I have to look at it.

Just the whole idea, though, of taking Peter's money, and then having the government taking care of everyone's health care and giving people their pills-

INHOFE: Yeah. I don't like it. I'm very uncomfortable.

It's been about 50 years since there was a Republican majority and a Republican President for a full congressional session. Do you want the gravestone on this session to say, "We created the largest entitlement since Johnson?"

SEN. RICK SANTORUM (R.-PA.): Well, I would say one of the things we wanted to do was understand that any kind of modern health care program has to have a prescription drug benefit. You can say, well, you are creating a new entitlement, but what you are doing is recognizing the dynamic change in medicine that includes now as one of the principal therapies in treating people pharmaceutical products. . . . What we needed to accomplish-and again I haven't looked at all the details-is that we fundamentally changed the whole Medicare program to make it more private sector oriented and to make it more efficient, to make it better quality, to make it a system that is not going to go bankrupt when all the baby boomers hit retirement.

Do you want the legacy of this Republican Congress to be the prescription drug benefit-the biggest new entitlement since Johnson?

SEN. GEORGE VOINOVICH (R.-OHIO): I think you have to look at things in a larger picture. . .We have been talking about a prescription drug benefit a long time and probably couldn't have a better group of people working on this legislation that are concerned about cost containment, private sector involvement, and so on, than the group that we have now. . . . I was saying to some of my colleagues that this is a big deal for our President. This is a big deal for the Republican Party-if we are able to pull this thing off on a bipartisan basis with fiscal restraint. Kennedy is just raving and ranting against it. On the other hand, the AARP has come out in favor of it. I think from a substantive and also from a political point of view, it's a win. Because if we lose our President and we lose the Senate, some of the people that are concerned about this, then it's Katie-bar-the-door.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Nov 24, 2003
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