Senate plans Medicare as Democrats protest in rain

[Reuter / Joanne Kenen]

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Senate Republicans Friday released
their Medicare plan as Democrats gathered to denounce them under
yellow umbrellas bearing the word ``shame'' at a rainy,
alternative hearing on the Capitol lawn.
Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee said they would
save $270 billion from Medicare over seven years by slowing
payments to hospitals and doctors, raising some costs to
patients, and encouraging more people to select from a broad
range of new managed-care options.
``We are going to really do it, not with smoke and
mirrors,'' committee chairman William Roth of Delaware said.
The incomplete House bill, in contrast, leaves billions of
dollars to a budgetary device known as a ``lookback'' that would
trigger another round of savings in a few years if managed care
and market competition do not bring as much in savings as the
plan's authors hope for.
The Senate would also raise the age at which people qualify
for Medicare from 65 to 67 starting in the year 2003, before
waves of baby boomers start to retire and place new financial
strains on the Medicare system.
Also Friday the House Commerce Committee passed a bill that
would abolish the federal Medicaid health insurance program for
the poor and nursing home patients, replacing it with lump sum
grants to states.
Furious Democrats say the Republicans are cutting Medicare
much more than needed to prevent it from going broke, gouging
poor and old people to give tax breaks to the rich.
The symbolic session House Democratic leader Richard
Gephardt of Missouri convened on the Capitol lawn had all the
trappings of a formal hearing, including panels of witnesses and
reams of written testimony.
Secretary of Labor Robert Reich told the Democratic panel
that doctors and hospitals would pass the ``savings'' from
Medicare onto other Americans, turning the working class into
the ``anxious class.''
House Republicans denied they had shut the Democrats out,
and even publicly posted the room number in the Rayburn House
Office Building that had been made available to them.
Inside, the House Ways and Means Committee convened a long
hearing on Medicare, where tempers flared and about 20 elderly
protesters, who had arrived primed for confrontation with tape
over their mouths and a lawyer by their side, were escorted from
the room.
Committee chairman Bill Archer of Texas scolded Democrats
for portraying the Republicans as hard-hearted, saying Democrats
offered ``band-aids'' but the Republicans wanted to come up with
solutions for the long haul.
``We are on the verge of compassioning Medicare to death,''
Archer said.
Some of the final figures on the Senate plan will not be
available until next week, but premiums to individuals would
rise to about $90-$95 a month over seven years from the current
$46, and wealthy people would pay more.
Both the House and Senate set the ``means'' test for
affluent individuals at $75,000. The House sets it at $125,000
for couples, and the Senate at $100,000.
The Senate would raise the deductible from $100 to $150 of
doctor bills annually starting next year, and then rise $10 a
year after that. The House bill does not change deductibles.
Senate Republican staffers said $70 billion of the savings
would come from higher fees to recipients, $150 billion from
cutbacks to health providers and $50 billion from encouraging
seniors to opt out of traditional fee-for-service Medicare in
favor of managed care or new medical savings accounts.