Dems launch new attacks on HHS Medicare education program
Democrats are escalating the battle over the Bush administration's education campaign for the new Medicare law, seeking separate investigations by the General Accounting Office and the Health and Human Services Department's inspector general into whether the campaign is inappropriately political.
A request to GAO from seven Senate and House Democrats says the television ad being run by HHS "is so simplified that it does not provide any meaningful information to beneficiaries. In addition, the lack of detail about the changes in Medicare will mislead beneficiaries to make erroneous conclusions about the benefits that will be available to them."
The requesters -- led by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who asked GAO last month to look into the appropriateness of the flyer Medicare is sending to all 41 million beneficiaries -- now want GAO to investigate why print ads are running in newspapers like Roll Call, whose readers probably are not Medicare beneficiaries, and the appropriateness of HHS having hired media firms that are also handling President Bush's re-election campaign.
On the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions ranking member Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said he already knows why the campaign has been structured as it has. "There is no purpose for these advertisements except to convince senior citizens that the Medicare bill is good for them. They are nothing more than propaganda for the Bush re-election campaign, using $23 million of senior citizens' own money," said Kennedy, referring to the combined cost of running the ads and mailing the flyer.
Separately, five House Democrats, led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., are asking the HHS inspector general to investigate the appropriateness of the campaign, including whether the contracts for the ads were competitively bid, if the campaign "follows the norm for a traditional public-service announcement" and why the campaign is running two years before the drug benefit is set to begin.
"We are concerned that this effort is a blatant misuse of taxpayer funds for political purposes and that the administration will be using its own campaign operatives to place the ads," the members wrote.
Republicans, however, said Democrats were complaining to keep the issue alive. "I don't think [the complaints are] legitimate," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in an interview with CongressDaily reporters.
"You've got to get the information out," said Grassley. The advertising campaign is needed, he said, to educate people who might be eligible for a low-income benefit associated with drug discount cards starting in June. Since participation is voluntary and seniors must decide soon whether they will participate in the new program, the advertising is an important use of Medicare dollars, Grassley said.
Emily Heil contributed to this report.