Posted on 03/14/2006 3:18:57 PM PST by kenth
CANANDAIGUA, N.Y. - President Bush campaigned Tuesday to boost the troubled new Medicare drug program that is the subject of a fierce election-year debate between Democrats and Republicans.
Bush pleaded with older Americans — a key voting block, particularly in midterm congressional elections — to look positively on the new benefit. Under the program, the government subsidizes medication costs for the elderly and disabled through plans created by private insurers.
In effect since January, it has been under fire from Democrats as too confusing for seniors with its numerous plans and coverage gaps — and from some conservative Republicans as an overly costly expansion of government.
But Bush said seniors, particularly those on the lower end of the income scale, should at least explore the options and consider enrolling before a May 15 deadline ushers in higher premiums.
"I think you're going to like what you see," the president said from a public high school gym in this conservative-leaning western New York community. "The key is saving a little money in retirement."
During a 35-minute discussion with a panel assembled by the White House, Bush acknowledged problems early on, when errors left many temporarily without coverage.
But he said the program is providing 50 percent reductions in drug costs for the average elderly patient, and significantly higher savings for lower-income seniors. And he said the introduction of choice — though bewildering at first — is also helping the 26 million who have enrolled so far to benefit from higher quality.
Bush also argued the program is proving less expensive than anticipated. Federal spending on the drug benefit will be 20 percent lower in 2006 than was estimated last summer, due to competition and the wider availability of generic drugs, according to the White House.
"It's working," Bush said. "It makes a lot of sense."
Later, Bush visited Ferris Hills at West Lake, a seniors residence. He was supposed to be there during a Medicare education session for residents, but weather forced a schedule rearrangement that had him arriving about 90 minutes late, after the program was completed. So Bush was left briefly greeting a few seniors who waited for him in common rooms.
He perhaps unwittingly used language recalling a famous Democratic anti-poverty initiative, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s.
"Everybody explaining Medicare to you — the new deal?" Bush asked a crowd in one room. "I hope so. It's worth looking at."
Later Tuesday, back at the White House, the president was also meeting with representatives from groups that have been holding education and enrollment sessions around the country.
It was the first of two straight days Bush was devoting to the program. On Wednesday, he is delivering a Medicare speech at an assisted living facility in Silver Spring, Md., a Washington suburb.
The renewed presidential attention reflects the issue's high stakes in a year when most of Congress is up for re-election and Bush wants to help his party retain control of both chambers.
"The Medicare drug program has been a nightmare for America's seniors and is clear evidence of the Bush administration's shocking incompetence," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., said.
Democrats favored benefits provided directly by the government rather than through private companies and hope to make the program a liability for Republicans. Americans United, a group with close ties to congressional Democrats, intends to use polling, television advertisements and public events to campaign against the benefit.
While in New York, Bush met Jason McElwain, the autistic basketball team manager who drew national cheers by scoring 20 points in four minutes for his suburban Rochester high school team. The president also met relatives of five U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and elsewhere. While with the family of Jason Dunham, killed in April 2004 in Iraq, the president signed a bill naming a nearby post office for the Marine corporal.
Look pal, I've been reading your posts for while. You seem like a nice guy, but you're prone to long winded diatribes that don't answer the questions of the debate. I'm hear to discuss political conservatism, in the context of a conservative policy agenda for America. That is what Free Republic is all about and what I'm all about. One more time. The new Prescription Drug Program is anathema to the conservative agenda. It is a liberal socialist, welfare entitlement program and it should not exist. From your ongoing defense of the PDP, I can only conclude you support it. That is not the conservative position. Nuff said.
I'd like to agree with you, except that I have not been defending the drug plan, much less mounting an ongoing defense of the plan.
I simply noted a Fox report that a poll found most people eligible for the program had a favorable opinion of it, and that my father-in-law said it saved him money.
When my name was put in a list of pings where someone argued against the program, I did not respond. When you responded to that post in a manner that might lead some to think that, because my name was in the list of pings, that I was a supporter of the plan, or had even posted any arguments for the plan, I simply responded to correct the possibly misleading inference.
Since then you have seemingly been arguing with that refutation, suggesting that if I have anything good to say about the program, I must be supporting it and therefore am not a conservative.
I believe I have sufficiently put that idea to rest, if not for you at least for anybody who has bothered to follow the last few posts.
Good ideas. Which is surely why none of them have a chance.
sad, but true. The only thing we can always count on is bureaucratic bungling, and political posturing.
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