A prescription drug benefit should not be added to the US Medicareprogram without a complete overhaul of the system, according to Representative Bill Thomas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare.
If the drug benefit is just tacked on, it would further weaken a program that is financially unsound and make the system less sustainable, he told a meeting of the Federation of American Hospitals, whose chief executive, Thomas Scully, has been nominated by President George W Bush to oversee the Health Care Financing Administration, which manages Medicare.
Rep Thomas said there must be a fundamental difference in the way Medicare funds are accounted for and how they are spent. He does not believe Medicare trustees' new projections that the program will be solvent until 2029, and added that, with some Medicare spending financed by payroll taxes and some by other federal funds, it is hard to know how much the program costs.
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