Senate Rejects Bid for Medicare Drug Benefits

WASHINGTON — Clashing on one of this election year’s most politically charged issues, a bitterly divided Senate on Thursday rejected a Democratic proposal to provide prescription drug benefits for Medicare beneficiaries under a plan more generous than Republicans have proposed.

The vote was 53 to 44, largely along party lines--the first major vote either house of Congress has taken on whether to enact a drug benefit that would be the biggest expansion of Medicare since the program’s inception in 1965.

The partisan debate was brief but signaled poor prospects for bipartisan compromise on the issue--even though members of both parties have said they believe that the federal government should do more to help the elderly cover soaring drug costs that are increasingly central to modern medical care.

On another issue, the Senate handed a big victory to business interests by voting 57 to 41 to block Labor Department rules setting stricter ergonomic standards for the nation’s workplaces.

The measure already has been approved by the House, but President Clinton has threatened to veto any bill containing the provision.

The votes on Medicare and ergonomics came on amendments to an annual appropriations bill to finance programs for the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education departments.

Senate Democrats forced the vote on their Medicare drug plan just one day after Republicans pushed their own bill through the House Ways and Means Committee, staking out for the first time a clear GOP position on an issue that both parties see as a top concern among voters this year. GOP leaders hope to bring their bill before the full House next week.

The Republican bill would provide government subsidies to private insurance companies that provide prescription drug coverage for Medicare beneficiaries.

The program would cover only low-income elderly people, as well as others who face extremely high drug costs, and would cost an estimated $158 billion over 10 years.

Senate Democrats’ proposal, by contrast, would provide drug benefits through the Medicare program and for all beneficiaries, regardless of income.

Under the Democrats’ proposal, the elderly would pay a deductible of $250 a year for drugs. After the deductible was met, the government would pay for part of drug expenses up to $4,000 a year. All expenses above $4,000 a year would be fully covered by the government.

Sponsors of the bill estimate that beneficiaries would have to pay about $35 a month in premiums, although subsidies would be provided for the poor. The program would cost about $240 billion over 10 years.

Democrats were under no illusion that they would win Senate approval of their Medicare drug plan Thursday. “This will probably be the only vote we’ll have on prescription drugs in this session of the Senate,” said Sen. John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).

But Senate Republicans said it was irresponsible to vote on so complex a measure as an amendment to an unrelated spending bill without having gone through the traditional scrutiny of Senate committee hearings and deliberation.

They dismissed the Democratic maneuver as a political sham that will make it more difficult for lawmakers who want to find a bipartisan middle ground on the issue.

“This is a politics-first amendment,” said Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas). “This makes it harder for people . . . to bring us together to pass a bill.”

The vote on ergonomics came two weeks after the Republican-controlled House voted--largely on party lines--to block the proposed regulations that Clinton wants to make final before he leaves office in January.

At issue are rules proposed last November to require employers to take certain steps to help ensure that millions of American workers will have ergonomically sound workstations to prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders, such as carpal tunnel syndrome.

Senate Republicans, heeding complaints of an irate business lobby, said the rules could cost employers untold billions of dollars a year.

But Democrats argued that many of the required measures would be inexpensive and in the long run would yield huge savings on workers’ compensation claims. As many as 1.8 million workers a year suffer from ergonomic-related injuries, the Labor Department estimates.