So the hopes that the Administration had of the Medicare Bill being a political plus have looked pretty grim for a while. But they really didn’t need their own government agencies putting the metaphorical boot in. The NY Times leads its front page with a DHHS estimate that 3.8 million retirees will see their employer provided-drug benefits evaporate in the first years of the new Medicare Law. Let’s not ignore the fact that these retirees are more likely to vote and more likely to vote about health care than any other demographic group, including the smaller number of much poorer seniors who will benefit from the Medicare bill.

Just a week ago the Administration announced that it was basically OK to lie to Congress about what it knew about the likely cost of the Medicare bill, and then hide that information for over 6 months. You’d have thought that they might have lost this latest report behind a filing cabinet until after November.