WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leaders, confident that they will pass a Medicare prescription-drug benefit, headed into a likely showdown vote today by picking up the support of a key Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.
"We’re going to deliver a bill," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., predicted on CNN’s "Late Edition."
"It is not a perfect bill, but it is a first step," Feinstein said in a rare Sunday session of the Senate.
Joining Feinstein, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said that if the bill represents the "sole opportunity to inject $400 billion in a long-sought prescription-drug benefit into Medicare, I will vote yes. I will not vote to let the last train that leaves the U.S. Senate go out without $400 billion to be used to help vulnerable seniors and those who are getting crushed by prescription-drug costs."
Still, the bill’s opponents vowed to try to defeat the measure.
Three Democratic senators seeking their party’s presidential nomination — John Kerry of Massachusetts, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and John Edwards of North Carolina — planned to interrupt their campaigns to return to Washington and join Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts in an effort to block the bill’s passage.
The measure, which was passed by the House on a 220-215 vote Saturday, is backed by President Bush and is expected to be a major issue in next year’s congressional and presidential campaigns.
At the center of the legislation is an optional prescription-drug benefit for most seniors that would begin in 2006. For the first $2,250 in drug costs each year, Medicare would pay 75 percent after a $250 deductible. Then there would be a gap in coverage, with patients solely responsible for the next $2,850 in drug costs. Once seniors had paid $3,600 out of their own pockets, Medicare would cover 95 percent of the cost of subsequent prescriptions. The monthly premiums, starting at about $35, and annual deductibles would increase with inflation.
In addition, the bill would set aside more than $14 billion in payments and risk-sharing for health-maintenance organizations and preferred-provider organizations. The funds are intended to encourage managed-care plans to participate in Medicare and to help them offer better benefits packages at lower costs than the traditional fee-for-service program Medicare now offers. Starting in 2010, pilot programs in six areas would allow managed-care plans to compete with the current program.
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