Fuzzy Math

Why, oh why, do we believe any numbers that come out of this Administration?

The Bush administration offered a new estimate of the cost of the Medicare drug benefit on Tuesday, saying it would cost $720 billion in the next 10 years.

That is much more than the $400 billion Congress assumed when it passed legislation creating the benefit in late 2003.

But administration officials said the numbers were not comparable. The original estimate was for the years 2004 to 2013. The new estimate covers the period from 2006, when the drug benefit becomes available, to 2015.

This is what they're saying, then: the first time they were calculating the cost of the drug benefit, they included the years 2004 and 2005, BEFORE THE BENEFIT WAS ELIGIBLE. That's an admission of duplicity, if not outright guilt.

Let's remember that this is the THIRD upward cost calculation of this benefit (which really is more of a benefit for Big Pharma than actual seniors). The original cost was supposed to be around $400 billion. Then the White House admitted it was about $100 billion higher, and it was revealed that they pressured the chief actuary Richard Foster to withhold cost estimates under the $400 billion marker. (incidentally, this little tidbit, or some would say "illegal action," is not in the NY Times story.)

So this is upward tick #3. And I wholeheartedly expect #4.

So why does this estimate keep going up and up? Well, maybe because it pays for rich people to keep their erection:

Several members of Congress cited the latest cost estimates as a reason Medicare should not pay for Viagra and other "lifestyle drugs." Medicare officials said last week that the new benefit would pay for Viagra, Levitra and similar drugs when they were needed to treat erectile dysfunction.

Sick patients aren't looking to buy Viagra. This is merely an add-on from Pfizer to sell more penis pills.

The good news is that the Democrats in Congress are framing this exactly right:

Mr. (Rahm) Emanuel said: "The new cost estimate destroys the credibility of the Bush administration. Officials were so far off in estimating the cost of the Medicare law. Why should we believe what they say about the financial problems of Social Security?"

Representative Pete Stark of California, the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said: "I told you so. We can't trust numbers provided by administration officials. They'll say anything to get a bill passed. And if the new drug benefit costs more, the extra money goes to their friends in the pharmaceutical industry, not to senior citizens."

Be sure you let your Congresspeople know that every time Bush and the Republicans submit a budget proposal, their response should be, "OK, what are the REAL numbers?"