In June 2003, both the House and Senate passed legislation that would provide coverage to Medicare beneficiaries for outpatient prescription drugs. A report providing a side-by-side comparison of the two proposals is available on the Kaiser Family Foundation web site at http://www.kff.org/content/2003/6103.

Both the House and Senate bills would provide additional assistance for low-income Medicare beneficiaries. Tables comparing the subsidies proposed in the House and Senate bills are available in another report, "State-Level Poverty Data for the Medicare Population." This report, which is available at http://www.kff.org/content/2003/6101, also includes data on the number of low-income Medicare beneficiaries who may be eligible for additional assistance.