CBS to Resume Airing Administration’s Medicare Ad

CBS said Wednesday it will resume airing the Bush administration’s television ad about the new Medicare prescription drug law, days after Republicans criticized the network for pulling the spot.

CBS was the only network to have stopped running the publicly funded ad pending a review of its content by congressional investigators. That review is continuing.

A CBS spokesman, Dana McClintock, said the reversal had nothing to do with GOP assertions that Democratic-leaning top CBS executives yanked the ad for partisan reasons. McClintock said changes made to the ad at the insistence of ABC were sufficient to satisfy CBS’ concerns as well.

“Based on that alteration and our review, the ad has been cleared to run on the network,” he said.

Kevin Keane, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department, said last week that the administration edited the ad to acknowledge that savings can vary among older people from the Medicare drug card that goes into effect in June and prescription drug coverage in 2006.

The administration is spending $9.5 million to air the 30-second ad as part of its effort to educate people about the law. Democratic lawmakers and a number of interest groups have called the ad a barely disguised commercial for President Bush’s reelection campaign.

Democrats asked the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to examine whether the administration should be using taxpayer money to air the commercial.

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson has said he would withdraw the ad if congressional investigators deem it political.