Agency Sees Withholding of Medicare Data From Congress as Illegal
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, May 3 — The Congressional Research Service says the Bush administration apparently violated federal law by ordering the chief Medicare actuary to withhold information from Congress indicating that the new Medicare law could cost far more than White House officials had said.

In a report on Monday, the research service said that Congress's "right to receive truthful information from federal agencies to assist in its legislative functions is clear and unassailable." Since 1912, it said, federal laws have protected the rights of federal employees to communicate with Congress, and recent laws have "reaffirmed and strengthened" those protections.

The actuary, Richard S. Foster, has testified that he was ordered to withhold the cost estimates last year, when Congress was considering legislation to add a drug benefit to Medicare. The order, he said, came from Thomas A. Scully, who was then the administrator of Medicare.

Mr. Foster said Mr. Scully threatened to discipline him for insubordination if he gave Congress the data.

The research service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, said Mr. Scully's order "would appear to violate a specific and express prohibition of federal law." The actuary, it said, has a duty to "make professional and reliable cost estimates, unfettered by any particular partisan agenda."

In March, Bush administration officials suggested that they would provide the actuary's cost estimates to Congress. "We have nothing to hide, so I want to make darn sure that everything comes out," Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, said on March 16. But a month later, in a letter to Congress, the administration refused to provide the documents.

Mr. Scully has confirmed telling Mr. Foster that "I, as his supervisor, would decide when he would communicate with Congress."