NYT: Medicare Actuary Gives Wanted Data toCongress [View All]

Medicare Actuary Gives Wanted Data to Congress
By ROBERT PEAR

Published: March 20, 2004


WASHINGTON, March 19 — Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary of Medicare, provided Congress with documents on Friday showing that federal payments to private health insurance plans under a new Medicare law could far exceed what Congress assumed when it passed the measure last fall.

For months, lawmakers had been seeking the data, but Mr. Foster said in an interview that he had withheld it under instructions from Bush administration officials....

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The documents estimate that the new law will increase Medicare payments to private health plans by a total of $46 billion over the next 10 years, not the $14 billion assumed by lawmakers when they voted on the legislation. Mr. Foster had cited the discrepancy in an interview earlier this week, but the documents he turned over on Friday, Mr. Foster said, show that the Bush administration was aware of the gap well before Congress approved the new law....

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....if the estimates of higher costs had been known last year, they would have given ammunition to Democrats and other critics who said the bill was lavishing money on insurance companies at the expense of the traditional Medicare programs....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/politics/20MEDI.html