Dole Promises US Elderly He'll Save Medicare

In campaign stops in Florida and elsewhere, US Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole has been telling the elderly his administration would save Medicare and social security, not devastate them. He stressed his support for the latest Republican budget proposal, which would slow projected Medicare spending by about $160 billion by 2002, and proposed a bipartisan commission to deal with Medicare's longer-term problems.

The commission would be similar to the two-party Social Security Commission on which Mr Dole served in the early 1980s. Mr Dole also accused Democrats of playing scare politics with Medicare.

Democrats have countered that Mr Dole's economic numbers do not compute, and claim that Republicans really mean cutting Medicare and shifting more costs to the elderly when they talk about slowing the rate of the program's growth.