Before breaking for the Fourth of July recess, both houses of Congress passed a Medicare prescription drug benefit by narrow margins—including a 216-215 vote in the House of Representatives.
Lawmakers were continuing to wrangle on reconciling the two versions of the bill, the largest expansion of Medicare since its inception in 1965. If ultimately passed and signed by President George W. Bush, the reform will provide two private-sector alternatives for the nation's 40 million Medicare enrollees: they could buy additional policies solely for drugs or join preferred-provider networks.
The Congressional Budget Office had estimated that a drug benefit plan would cost $400 billion over 10 years. But because the bill attracted lobbying attention from virtually every sector of the health care industry, the large number of attached provisions—they comprise 800 of the bill's 1000 pages—would increase that figure.
