GAO Investigates Medicare Ad Campaign

Washington

The General Accounting Office, at the request of several congressional Democrats, has decided to investigate whether the Bush administration is using a Medicare ad campaign for political purposes.

In February, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson unveiled a nationwide education campaign to inform Medicare’s 40 million participants about the program’s new benefits. Under provisions of the Medicare reform law, seniors will be offered a prescription drug discount card in June of this year, and a prescription drug benefit starting in 2006.

Pegged at $12.6 million, the campaign includes network and cable television advertising to run through March, and a print, radio and Internet Spanish-language campaign.

HHS has also produced a flyer about the new Medicare law to be mailed to 36 million households. But in a Jan. 29 letter to David Walker, U.S. Comptroller General at the GAO, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., labeled the flyer “propaganda” produced in response to criticisms of the new law. The letter stated that the flyer would cost taxpayers $10 million in printing and mailing costs.

And a Feb. 5 letter to Walker, signed by Lautenberg, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and six other Democrats, stated that the HHS television spot is “so oversimplified and distorted” that it will “mislead Medicare enrollees about the actual benefits they could receive” under the new law. The letter asks Walker to report on whether the media campaign is “an appropriate use of government funds.”

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