Gore Takes Drug Plan to the Experts

Vice President Al Gore used a round-table with senior citizens at a suburban St. Louis health center Monday to warn against a Republican plan to privatize Medicare prescription drug benefits.

Saying he is “for the people” while Texas Gov. George W. Bush is “for the powerful,” Gore sharpened his populist rhetoric by delivering barbed criticisms about Republican ideas on Medicare and health care.

And at a Monday night speech in San Diego before the National Council of La Raza, an influential Latino political advocacy organization, Gore again emphasized health care and contrasted his views on affirmative action, child care and education with those of his Republican rival, who is scheduled to speak to the Latino group on Wednesday.

Gore’s remarks kick off a weeklong tour to showcase his new “prosperity and progress” theme.

At the health center Gore dismissed as a “fraud” a bill passed last week by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

The bill, which lacks Senate approval and would likely face a veto by President Clinton, would rely on private health insurers to provide Medicare drug benefits to senior citizens. The plan is an alternative to the soaring drug costs that plague seniors who now get benefits under the government-supported medical program.

Joined by House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) and dozens of elderly activists at a community center in Clayton, an affluent suburb of St. Louis, Gore said the Republican legislation is a “phony proposal” designed to “fool people into thinking they have a prescription drug benefit.”

Gore said Bush, the GOP congressional majority and the pharmaceutical industry all oppose a Democratic alternative on medication costs because “they’re afraid if the government helps you buy prescription drugs it would end” the industry’s ability to keep drug prices artificially inflated for retirees.

The vice president nodded his head as a group of senior citizens detailed regimens of scrimping and embarrassing belt-tightening they have resorted to in order to cope with soaring medication costs.

The vice president told the seniors about an elderly New Hampshire woman who complained to him earlier this year about “how every so often she’d go to her medicine cabinet, then take out her medicine and spread it out on the kitchen table, then she goes through them one by one to figure out which ones she has to cut down on and which ones she has to cut out completely. That just shouldn’t happen in our Medicare program. It’s just plain wrong.”

Gore said Monday that Bush has joined drug manufacturers in his opposition to an $80-billion proposal pushed by his campaign, House Democrats and the Clinton administration. The Democratic plan, Gore said, would bolster drug coverage under Medicare but keep it under the auspices of the 34-year-old government program.

The administration option, touted Monday by Gore and Gephardt, would pay half of annual drug costs up to $2,000, at first without deductibles. Monthly premiums for Gore’s alternative would start at $25 and full coverage would kick in if a recipient’s drug costs surpass $4,000. A similar Democratic House bill was torpedoed last week by GOP House leaders who prevented it from reaching a full vote.

The Republican bill, which passed last week by a 217-214 vote along party lines, would offer premiums ranging from $35 to $40 a year and charge a $250 deductible. The program would pay for half of a recipient’s annual medication costs up to $2,100 and full coverage after costs reach $6,000. Republican backers said the plan would cost $40 billion over five years.

Bush supports the GOP prescription drug bill but has been muted in his comments since last week’s action. Bush spokesmen and Republican National Committee staffers both questioned Gore’s commitment to senior citizens, saying the Clinton administration had done nothing in the last eight years to stem rising medication costs for seniors.

“If Gore was truly interested in making prescription drugs more affordable, he’d be in Washington working on bipartisan reform, not out on the campaign trail playing partisan politics,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Mark Pfeifle.

Gore himself called attention to partisan differences in his remarks before La Raza.

In front of a packed ballroom of 3,000, the presumed Democratic candidate was energized, delivering a standard stump speech with gusto, spurred on by frequent applause and cheers from the crowd. With Santana’s hit “Smooth” playing in the background, Gore was welcomed as “no stranger” to the Latino community.

“You show that politicians cannot just come in, speak a little Spanish, march in the Cinco de Mayo parade and think they can get the Latino vote, “ said Cruz Bustamante, in remarks that only thinly veiled their reference to Bush.

Contrasting his promises with Bush’s “palabras” (words), Gore promised he would address the health care needs of Latino children and senior citizens--groups he cited as being the most “uninsured and underinsured” in the nation.

Later, Gore spoke by phone with Vicente Fox, the newly elected president of Mexico.

“He asked for a chance to have a meeting in Washington soon and I will look forward to having that discussion,” Gore said. “I congratulated him and the Mexican people.”

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Times staff writer Megan Garvey and Times researcher Massie Ritsch contributed to this story.