Bush's Medicare drug plan backfires

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Bush's Medicare drug plan backfires

Newsday.comMarie CoccoFebruary 24, 2004Somehow the president found poison in the Medicare prescription drug plan.This was supposed to have been a promise made, a promise kept. A way for a Republican president to deliver results his Democratic predecessor never was able to produce. A way to give some substance to his campaign rhetoric of compassion. A way, more than anything else, for President George W. Bush and the Republican Party to gain greater political support from the elderly, who are reliably energetic - and reliably Democratic - at the polls.Instead of political lemonade, the Medicare prescription plan is bearing bitter fruit.The elderly don't much like it. They're furious at a meager benefit that does little to control costs. They fear the Medicare benefit may jeopardize more generous employer-based plans millions of middle-income retirees now depend on.Democrats - largely shut out of crafting the legislation after first cooperating with the White House - grouse about this partisan high-handedness. Conservative Republicans - uneasy from the start about the measure's anticipated $395-billion cost - are enraged now that it turns out Bush's own numbers-crunchers estimated the tab at $534 billion. The White House didn't reveal this until after the law was signed.There are now two official investigations into the brawling game of hardball that has marked the measure's political passage. The House Ethics Committee probes allegations by Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) that GOP leaders promised to donate $100,000 to his son's congressional race in exchange for Smith's vote. Smith voted against the legislation.The General Accounting Office examines the administration's taxpayer-financed advertising about the drug plan. The watchdog is trying to determine if the $12.6 million ad campaign (which happens to funnel some money through the same media firm handling Bush re-election advertising) is legitimate public service or illegitimate politicking.So here we have a president who signed into law a landmark expansion of one of the most popular government programs ever. And all he gets is whining.In January, a poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates showed that slightly more people said they'd be less likely to vote for Bush because of the drug plan than more likely. Last week, the Gallup organization reported a slide in Bush's standing with voters on the health-care issue - 57 percent now disapprove of how the president handles health care, just 35 percent approve.It seems hard to fathom just how this master political stroke went so far foul, so fast. Hard, that is, if you assume there was a desire to make good policy first and hope the reward would be good politics. The reverse logic drove the legislation.Republicans in the House were determined to use the drug benefit bill as a vehicle to achieve their goal of turning Medicare from a government program into a system in which beneficiaries purchase insurance from managed-care companies. Lawmakers - and administration officials - were determined to protect the pharmaceutical industry from anything its lobbyists suggested would reduce prices and, thus, profits.So the Medicare measure actually bars the government from negotiating price discounts for the elderly - something it routinely does for veterans and members of the military. It seeks to shut down the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada, even as states, straining under Medicaid costs, take bold steps to do so.Now, this president is brilliant at politics. But he has never learned that politics only takes you so far. At some point, an incumbent has to govern. That means proposing policies that make sense, working to achieve compromise and delivering for the people who will, by and large, reward an honest job well done.Good policy makes good politics. If Bush fails to win re-election, it may well be because he's never believed this maxim.Her e-mail address iscocco. http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-vpcoc243683956feb24,0,5697270,print.column?coll=ny-news-columnists