WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A House of Representatives panel on Thursday rejected along party lines a Democratic bid to force the Bush administration to turn over records about the estimated cost of last year's Medicare drug bill.
Democrats say the prescription drug benefit measure, which they mostly opposed, would have been defeated had lawmakers known that the administration's cost estimates were about one-third higher than the $400 billion, 10-year estimate by Congress' own budget office.
A top Medicare actuary Rick Foster accused Medicare's then-chief Tom Scully of threatening to fire him if he shared his cost estimates with lawmakers before the vote.
Democrats wanted to force the administration to release the records and establish that it cannot hide information from the legislature.
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