Drug plan risks senior backlash

At a time when healthcare is among Americans' top concerns, President Bush and Congress are pushing to score a big victory: Giving the elderly $400 billion worth of help to pay for prescription drugs.

It's a vast new benefit for retirees, even as Washington isn't planning anything similar for younger Americans, who also face rising health-insurance costs.

But if policymakers hope to bask in gratitude from America's seniors, they shouldn't be too hasty. The risk of alienating a key voting bloc with a bill that falls well short of expectations is large, judging by polls and interviews with seniors' advocates. That's a key reason this year's push for Medicare reform is so tough.

Call it the Leona Kozien scenario.

She's the angry senior who flung herself across the hood of a Chevy Caprice belonging to a lawmaker who helped draft the last Medicare overhaul, as he attempted to flee protesters at a Chicago senior

citizens center. The backlash from retirees was so serious that Congress was forced to repeal the law in 1989, just a year after it was passed.

"Not only is a [new] backlash possible, it's likely," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "Seniors want what America probably can't afford. They are only going to be satisfied with a very generous prescription drug bill that would break the bank."

Whether the 1988 scenario will repeat - and whether a Medicare law will even reach Mr. Bush's desk - is unclear. But today's parallels are striking. What sunk the 1988 law was the perception that seniors had more to lose than to gain from the law. While it expanded coverage for drugs and catastrophic care, it imposed new costs on many seniors who already had such coverage. After seniors began to see how the law affected them, Congress was blindsided by the negative response.

President Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress are in a similar bind. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have promised for three election cycles support for drug costs. Now, with Republicans controlling the White House and Congress, the pressure is on to keep those promises.

A key problem: Seventy percent of seniors think the changes Congress is considering will either have no effect or make the situation worse, according to one CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. And 76 percent say that Congress should do more (than current bills provide) to help senior citizens pay for drugs.

"Healthcare is going to be an important issue in the 2004 election, and prescription drugs are at the top of the list, especially for people over 50. If there is no prescription drug bill, look out: Seniors are going to be angry. But if there is a lousy prescription drug bill, they are going to be even angrier," says pollster John Zogby.

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