White House spokesman Jay Siewart said earlier in the day that the administration's backing of the bipartisan provision, drafted by members of the House Armed Services Committee, was a direct effort to stimulate action on the creation of a much broader prescription drug benefit for the millions of seniors who depend on the Medicare insurance program. The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the provision Wednesday. The legislative language creating the prescription program is wrapped into a much larger fiscal 2001 defense authorization bill. That bill lays out the House's defense spending priorities for the year, as initially determined by the subcommittees of the Armed Services Committee. Clinton again goes after Congress President Clinton has chipped away at Congress for some weeks on the issue of prescription drug coverage for Medicare beneficiaries, and both major party presidential hopefuls Texas Gov. George W. Bush for the Republicans, and Vice President Al Gore for the Democrats, have called for some sort of benefit.
Prescriptions promote the dignity that every retiree is entitled to.
Still, the administration and the GOP-controlled Congress have not been able to come together on the issue, since the emergence of a variety of proposals for such a benefit contributed to the failure of a bipartisan commission charged with devising a Medicare overhaul plan last year. The plan is similar to Clinton's proposal, which was wrapped into his fiscal 2001 budget blueprint. House Republicans introduced a proposal in April that would rely on private sector cooperation to devise a drug benefit, which would likely apply to only the poorest seniors, or those with modest levels of income. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The high cost of prescriptions may be the hot issue in this election.