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COPYRIGHT 2003 Thomson Financial Inc.
Medicare conferees met Sept. 9 and approved a series of agreements reached by staff over the August recess, notably a framework for temporary Medicare-endorsed drug discount cards.
The cards, designed to offer seniors immediate help while a full-scale drug benefit gets up and running, would go into effect within six months after the president signed Medicare prescription drug legislation, and would disappear when the full benefit was implemented, now slated for 2006.
In a single unanimous voice vote, the conferees also ratified a funding boost for critical access hospitals, a guarantee of medication management services for beneficiaries with multiple chronic ills, and coverage of screening tests for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, among other items.
Conference Committee chair Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA), while warning that nothing is final until everything is final, said the staff agreements covered "hundreds" of pages of legislation. But they also covered generally noncontroversial items, and...
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