Thompson Calls For Medicare ‘Facelift’

While President Bush has proposed "Immediate Helping Hand," a stopgap initiative to provide prescription drug coverage for low-income Medicare beneficiaries, HHS Secretary Thompson said on Feb. 28 that the plan "would merely be a Band-Aid approach to the complete facelift that Medicare really needs," the AP/Los Angeles Times reports. He asked, "If [lawmakers] pass prescription drugs without fixing Medicare, what's the catalyst to get them to fix Medicare?" Still, Thompson defended Bush's proposal, saying, "The president feels that Congress is not going to pass a Medicare reform proposal as quickly as he would like, and therefore he wants to make sure that our elderly citizens of America get access to drugs." According to Thompson, lawmakers, "wary" of a "complete Medicare overhaul," will likely back a proposal that would provide a drug benefit without "fundamentally changing" the program. "We know that Congress wants to pass prescription drugs," he said. Thompson also said that although he plans to back Bush's proposal to provide low-income Americans with tax credits to purchase private health insurance, he favors programs that would allow the uninsured to purchase health insurance from the government. "If tax credits are the way the president decides that he wants us to go, I'm going to follow him," he said, adding, "If Congress decides to go another way, I'm certainly there to offer advice as to what I think works in America" (McQueen, AP/Los Angeles Times, 3/1).