WHITE HOUSE RIDICULES GOP DRUG PLAN

WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration is taking aim at a GOP proposal
that would provide private prescription drug coverage to low-income
seniors, saying it would leave many elderly Americans still struggling
to pay for their medicines.

President Clinton's top economic and health advisers rebutted the
"sketchy" GOP plan as inferior to the White House's own proposal,
which would give prescription drug benefits to all Americans covered
under Medicare. "Republicans need to move from just the talk to
walking the walk," Gene Sperling, head of the president's National
Economic Council, said at a White House briefing Thursday.

The GOP plan, as outlined by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.,
calls for private health plans to offer drug benefits and government
subsidies to pay drug costs for low-income seniors. While many of the
details have yet to be worked out, Republicans said the plan would
lower drug prices, give seniors more coverage choice and help the
neediest Americans.

"To us it still seems like a Swiss cheese plan with more holes than
substance," Sperling said.

Republicans said the administration was too quick to criticize a plan
that has yet to be finalized.

"They're prematurely trying to play politics," said John Feehery,
Hastert's spokesman. GOP leaders are waiting for a formal estimate of
the plan's costs by the Congressional Budget Office.

"Once we complete those numbers we will give out more details. But we
believe we have a comprehensive plan for seniors," Feehery said.

Sperling said the GOP plan to provide subsidies to cover drug costs
for seniors at the poverty level would leave out 6 million Medicare
beneficiaries who have no drug coverage but have incomes above the
poverty line -which he calculated at about $12,500 a year for singles
and $16,875 per couple.

The White House plan has an estimated cost of $195 billion over 10
years. It would provide drug benefits to all 39 million Medicare
beneficiaries regardless of their income, paying up to $1,000 in drug
costs annually for a $26 monthly premium.

Republicans argue that aid should go to the neediest senior citizens
and say they are opposed to a big government program that would
displace private coverage that many seniors now have through
retirement benefits or HMOs.

It is not yet known what premiums would be under the GOP plan.
Sperling predicted drug benefits provided by private insurers -a
cornerstone of the GOP plan -would probably end up being too expensive
for many Medicare beneficiaries. The coverage would work much like
drug benefits under private supplemental policies such as Medigap,
which charge high premiums that increase as policy holders age, he
said.

This aspect of the Republican plan "should be particularly a concern
of older women" because the majority of people over age 85 are women.
"Building a drug program off that model has very serious concerns," he
said.

He also questioned whether Republicans will commit enough money to a
prescription drug program. GOP lawmakers have set aside $40 billion in
their budget proposal for Medicare over the next five years. Hastert
has said most of that would go toward the drug program but details
have not been announced.

Proposed GOP tax cuts of $792 billion over 10 years leave little room
for investments in a drug program unless spending cuts are made in
other programs, Sperling suggested.

"Their tax cut is filling up so much room that it's very difficult for
them to show how they can have a significant drug program without
either reducing the tax cut or relying on discretionary cuts that are
... unrealistic," he said.

Even while they took shots at the GOP plan, administration officials
said they wanted to work with Republicans to come up with a
compromise. They said they've been in discussions with members of a
Senate Finance Committee, which has held a number of hearings on
prescription drug coverage.

But time is running out -only five months remain before lawmakers wrap
up the session.

"We believe it can evolve into something that really does achieve the
principles we all share," said Chris Jennings, Clinton's chief health
adviser.