The Senate came up with a Medicare Bill which, while not perfect, gained bipartisan support and was at least a step towards extending Medicare by adding a drugbenefit for seniors.

House Republicans, guided by the Bush adminstration, have come up with a version that will end universal Medicare, and pass control over to Big Pharma and insurers (along with $12 billion in taxpayers subsidies, for starters).

It's a bad bill. It's so bad that a tide of opposition is rising from all areas of the political spectrum, opposed by Republicans and Democrats, conservativesand liberals. It's a badidea for a lot of reasons.

I have great respect for my friend and former colleague Newt Gingrich. But on the Medicare prescription drug legislation currently pending in Congress, he is dead wrong. The deal on prescription drugs struck this week is in fact bad news for senior citizens and possibly even worse political news for the Republican Party.

The original proposal of the Bush administration, and many of the ideas pushed by Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, provided policy answers to the right questions regarding seniors' health care and prescription drugs. By and large these reforms have been stripped out of the final bill. What is left is simply new spending that is sure to restrict the options available to seniors in the future.

In fact, this bill is going to cost millions of seniors their current prescription drug coverage.

This bill will add at least $400 billion in deficits over the coming decade. Worse, AARP and others have made it quite clear that they see this bill as just the opening gambit. They will be back, year after year, petitioning Congress to massively expand this already oversized new entitlement. Hillary Clinton's wish for ever-increasing government control over the American health care system will come true.

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