SCHAKOWSKY: BUSH ADMINISTRATIONS MISSTATEMENT OF THE DAY PRESCRIPTION DRUG BILL

DECEMBER 3, 2003

SCHAKOWSKY: BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S MISSTATEMENT OF THE DAY -
PRESCRIPTION DRUG BILL

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) issued today's "Bush Administration's Misstatement of the Day" on the Medicare drug bill slated to be signed by President Bush on Monday, December 8, 2003.

In a USA Today letter to the editor, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Tom Scully, wrote:

"I believe this law is good because it will help every Medicare beneficiary." (USA Today, December 2, 2003)

Today, however, it was reported in the New York Times under the headline Health Industry Bidding to Hire Medicare Chief:

The federal official who runs Medicare and was intimately involved in drafting legislation to overhaul the program is the object of a bidding war among five firms hoping to hire him to advise clients affected by the measure...

Mr. Scully has made no secret of the fact that he has been looking for jobs outside the government for more than six months - even as he spent hundreds of hours in closed sessions with House and Senate negotiators working out countless details of the legislation, which makes the biggest changes in Medicare since creation of the program in 1965.