(2004-03-14) Medicare Drug Cost Lies

Cost estimates on the Medicare Prescription Drugs benefit bill were kept hidden from Congress. Richard Foster, the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Friday night that he received a handwritten note from Thomas Scully, then the centers' administrator, in early June ordering him to ignore information requests from members of Congress who were drafting the drug bill... When George W Bush signed the bill in December the drug benefit bore a $395 billion price tag. In January, the president's Federal Budget director, Joshua Bolten, upped the estimate by $139 billion.

Update: it looks like there are other lies, as well. Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines... Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for "publicity or Propaganda purposes" not authorized by Congress. In the past, the General Accounting Office has found that federal agencies violated this restriction when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles written by the government or its contractors without identifying the source...

• CNN seems to bear some responsibility for distributing some of this junk

• Jay Rosen follow-up on Karen Ryan, one of the "reporters". I do admit. PR's "just fake it" mentality has advanced so far into normal practice, all over our public culture, left, middle and right, that it usually seems pointless to object. Yet in the case of Ryan we find someone so saturated with the PR mentality, with fakery as a normal condition in life, that she cannot distinguish between criticism of her creepy practice, ("I'm Karen Ryan reporting") and the world shouting at her: you're such a horrible person, Karen!