GOP: Bush would veto Medicare reforms

GOP: Bush would veto Medicare reforms

	Published : Thu, 11 Jan 2007 21:49 By : Agencies Print this Story

WASHINGTON (AFX) - President Bush will veto legislation requiring the government to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices under Medicare, Republican officials said Thursday.

The House is scheduled to debate and vote Friday on the bill, which is one of a handful of priority items for Democrats who gained control of Congress in last fall's elections.

Republicans said the White House was preparing a formal veto threat against the measure.

The administration has been working with key Republicans in Congress on a response to the legislation. One official said a recent draft of the formal statement was unequivocal in promising a veto.

Bush has already threatened to veto another of the top six bills Democrats are pushing across the House floor in the first two weeks of the new Congress. That's the measure, approved Thursday, to expand the extent to which federal funds could be used for embryonic stem cell research.

Several Democrats campaigned last fall as critics of the two-year-old program that offers prescription drug coverage under Medicare, saying it tilted too heavily toward the pharmaceutical industry.

In particular, they pledged to require the government to negotiate directly with industry for lower prescription drug prices. They said they would use the savings to reduce a coverage gap that is common in many plans.

Republicans argue that individual insurance companies already negotiate lower prices on behalf of their customers, and that the Democratic approach was tantamount to calling for federal price controls.

The Democrats suffered a significant setback on Wednesday when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the legislation was unlikely to result in lower prices.

'The secretary would be unable to negotiate prices across the broad range of covered Part D drugs that are more favorable than those obtained by (the plans) under current law,' Donald B. Marron, the CBO's acting director, wrote.

Rep John Dingell, a leading supporter of the legislation, dismissed the letter.

'This isn't the first time the Congress and CBO differed on the amount of savings a particular bill would achieve,' he said. 'Common sense tells you that negotiating with the purchasing power of 43 million Medicare beneficiaries behind you would result in lower drug prices.'