Medicare Cost Withholding Called Legal

Although Bush administration officials refused last year to provide Congress with information on the potential cost of the Medicare overhaul -- and threatened to fire a financial analyst if he released it -- their actions did not violate federal law, an internal investigation has concluded.

The inspector general’s office of the Health and Human Services Department based its conclusion in large part on input from the agency’s top lawyer, who told the department’s internal watchdog that the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services had no “independent authority to provide information to Congress.”

A summary of the report was released to some lawmakers and reporters late Tuesday. It promised to keep alive what Democratic lawmakers said was a fundamental conflict between the executive and legislative branches: that by denying Congress basic information about pending legislation, the Bush administration was undermining the two chambers’ authority.

“The Congress did not have the best information available to make a judgment on vital legislation,” said Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.). “The law is clear that we were entitled to this information. We asked for it. We were not given it.”

Rangel and other Democrats accused the administration of a cover-up and called for a fuller investigation, including whether White House officials were involved in decisions to withhold information.

As explained in a summary of the report, the administration’s interpretation of the pertinent federal laws contradicted a finding issued in May by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, also is looking into whether the withholding of information violates federal laws, particularly those related to congressional appropriations.

The department’s inspector general’s office, which did not address those laws, viewed the dispute between the top Medicare official and his chief actuary largely as a personnel matter.

The report from the inspector general’s office “shows that then-CMS Administrator Tom Scully acted within his legal authority” in controlling the flow of information from the office of chief actuary Richard S. Foster, department spokesman Bill Pierce said Tuesday. Democrats had sought Foster’s cost estimates during the debate.

But Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and other Republican lawmakers on Tuesday repeated their contention that Congress was bound to consider only the official figures prepared by the Congressional Budget Office.

During the Medicare debate last year, the Bush administration said it would not support a prescription drug benefit that cost taxpayers more than $400 billion over 10 years. In November, after painstaking analyses by the Congressional Budget Office that put the cost at $395 billion, a bitterly divided Congress passed the bill, which also overhauled the healthcare program for 41 million senior and disabled beneficiaries by increasing the role of private insurance companies, health maintenance organizations and drug-benefit managers.

In January, as part of its annual budget proposal, the Bush administration said the new Medicare law was more likely to cost $534 billion over 10 years. In March, Foster told reporters that Scully had threatened to fire him if he provided Democratic lawmakers with his office’s cost estimates, which were prepared during the debate and indicated that the cost could be as high as $551 billion.