Clinton Urges Patients’ Bill of Rights, Drug Coverage

With five months left before Congress is to adjourn, President Clinton on Saturday called on lawmakers to quickly pass a strong patients’ bill of rights and prescription drug coverage for seniors on Medicare.

“This critical legislation is long overdue,” Clinton said in his weekly radio address.

Republicans, however, said the GOP has led the way toward meaningful health care reform. The president is “scaring seniors,” said House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts Jr. of Oklahoma.

Clinton said Congress should strengthen and modernize Medicare with a voluntary prescription drug benefit to all 39 million Medicare beneficiaries, regardless of their income. For a $26 monthly premium, the plan would pay up to $1,000 in drug costs a year.

“No one creating a Medicare program today would even think of excluding coverage for prescription drugs,” Clinton said. “Yet more than 3 in 5 older Americans still lack affordable and dependable prescription drug coverage.”

Republican congressional leaders say the drug coverage should be only for seniors who need it most.

“The president loves to demagogue the Medicare issue by scaring seniors and promising big-spending proposals that are fiscally reckless,” Watts said in a statement. “What Republicans want to do is create a prescription drug coverage system for low-income seniors that is affordable, available and voluntary.”

The GOP proposal calls for private health plans to offer drug benefits and government subsidies to pay drug costs for the neediest seniors. Most of the $40 billion they earmarked for a five-year overhaul of Medicare would go toward the drug plan.

The Clinton administration says the GOP plan to provide subsidies to cover drug costs for seniors at the poverty level would leave out 6 million Medicare beneficiaries who have no drug coverage but have incomes above the poverty line.

Clinton also cited a study commissioned by the advocacy group Families USA that showed wholesale prices for 50 prescriptions frequently used by older Americans rose by 3.9% last year--faster than the overall 2.7% rate of inflation at the retail level. According to government figures, prices for all prescription drugs jumped 5.8% in 1999.

On getting a patients’ bill of rights, Clinton said he backed legislation the House approved last year.