Democrats, HHS spar over access to Medicare estimates

House Government Reform Committee ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., alleged Monday that the Bush administration was obstructing a congressional investigation into the cost estimates of last year's Medicare prescription drug law.

In a letter to the Health and Human Services Department, Waxman criticized the administration for failing to answer a request from the panel's Democrats for information about the administration's Medicare costs. HHS officials said last week that Waxman had "no right" to review administration documents on the estimates.

Democrats contend the administration concealed the higher cost to win congressional passage. In a letter last month, Waxman and the other Democrats on the Government Reform panel threatened legal action if the department did not release information about how the administration developed its cost estimate.

Invoking the "rule of seven," which requires the administration to submit information related to the panel's jurisdiction, the Democrats demanded by March 15 all estimates prepared by the Medicare actuary's office since Jan. 1, 2003.

In a letter last Friday, Dennis Smith, the HHS director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations, refused to provide the information. "The statute that you cite, of course, gives you no right to those documents," Smith wrote.

The Congressional Budget Office had scored the Medicare bill at $395 billion, a figure that administration officials used to discuss the bill, even though a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services actuary estimated the legislation would cost $534 billion.

Democrats contend that the bill would not have passed had a handful of conservatives known of the administration's higher estimate. Republicans say the estimate was not relevant, since Congress relies only on CBO's figures when considering legislation.

Smith also said HHS alerted conferees that its final scoring would be higher than CBO's scoring. That prompted Waxman and the other Democrats to expand their request for information. In Monday's letter, they asked the administration to disclose any information about the Medicare bills' cost estimates shared between administration officials and conferees, congressional leaders, or their staffs.