GOP Senator Urges Drug Plan Rewrite
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg said Congress should adjust the Medicare prescription drug benefit to rein in costs, even though President Bush had threatened to veto any weakening of the plan.
“I do feel there needs to be some changes in the Medicare drug benefit in order to make it affordable,” Gregg (R-N.H.) said on ABC’s “This Week.”
New projections put the cost of the drug benefit at $724 billion over 10 years when it starts in 2006, well above the original $400-billion estimate the White House used in 2003.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), however, said on “Fox News Sunday” that there was no need to make changes.
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