President revises earlier drug plan, tapping project surpluses

LOS ANGELES - President Clinton wants to use $58 billion from the growing budget surplus to help senior citizens pay for prescription drugs in 2002, revising an earlier proposal and offering more generous Medicare benefits than current Republican plans.

''We have the money to do this now and do it right,'' Clinton said Saturday in his weekly radio address, broadcast during a fund-raising trip in the West.

''We should use a part of our hard-earned budget surplus to meet America's most pressing priorities, like paying down the national debt, strengthening Medicare and providing a prescription drug benefit.''

Clinton outlined the package he intends to send to Congress this week: a drug subsidy in 2002, a year earlier than he first proposed and House Republicans are offering, and a $4,000 cap on an individual's annual out-of-pocket medicine costs, compared with $6,000 under the GOP plan.

The updated White House plan caps a week of intense political maneuvering on an election-year issue affecting 39 million elderly.

Senate Republicans voted largely along party lines Thursday to reject a Democratic plan for the drug coverage. House Republicans pushed their version through the Ways and Means Committee. A floor vote is expected this week.

''It's clear that you can't have modern health care without access to lifesaving pharmaceuticals,'' Rep. Nancy Johnson, who heads the Ways and Means human resources subcommittee, said Saturday in the GOP's weekly radio address.

Johnson, R-Conn., said that while more then two-thirds of older Americans have some prescription drug coverage under health plans, an estimated 12 million have none at all.

''This is simply morally wrong in the world's most prosperous country,'' she said. ''No senior should have to choose between filling their prescription and putting food on the table.''

Medicare, the federal insurance program for the elderly and disabled, does not cover prescription drugs. Most senior citizens have some kind of coverage through private health plans.

Clinton is proposing to spend $58 billion more over 10 years than the $195 billion total estimated in his initial plan in February.

Within days, the president is expected to announce a $1 trillion increase in projected federal surpluses. Sources have told The Associated Press the figure would more than double, to $1.9 trillion, the $746 billion the Clinton administration projected in February. The figures do not include Social Security.

The White House long has planned to spend part of that surplus on a drug benefit and part on a tax cut. In political speeches, Clinton says Republicans want to squander the money on a much bigger tax cut that would be unaffordable if the surplus dries up.

Under the GOP plan, ''If we don't have this projected surplus we'll be back in the soup'' of deficits, Clinton said during a political speech Saturday in Los Angeles, where he wound up a three-day fund-raising tour.

Clinton's health care adiviser, Chris Jennings, said the new White House proposal to spend some more of the surplus on drug coverage is not at odds with that criticism.

''He's not saying spend it all on a drug benefit, by any means,'' Jennings said. ''There's lot's of resources left.''

A House Republican leader, Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, countered in a statement Saturday that senior citizens ''do not deserve partisan wrangling'' from an administration ''looking only for recognition as their days in the executive branch quickly fade away.''

The House GOP proposal calls for private insurance companies, backed by hefty federal subsidies, to offer drug coverage to Medicare recipients nationwide. The bill includes subsidies for low-income senior citizens, as well as those experiencing extremely high costs.

Clinton and congressional Democrats, who have proposed slightly different plans, would require the government offer a uniform drug benefit under Medicare. Democrats claim only they offer the choice of affordable coverage to all elderly, instead of only those deemed most needy.

The rejected Senate plan is less generous than Clinton's, and slightly less expensive, at roughly $240 billion over 10 years.

By contrast, the House GOP bill costs an estimated $40 billion over five years.