While millions of elderly and disabled Americans await a historic Medicare law pushed by the Bush administration that would offer new drug benefits, U.S. Senate and House members are not likely to agree about their visions for Medicare any time soon, said New York Times senior writer Robin Toner on Monday.

Toner addressed these issues in a lecture titled "Making Health Policy in an Election Year" at Levis Faculty Center.

She said politicians in both parties have rediscovered the health care crisis.

"There is little question that the fundamental problems of cost and access in health care are getting worse," she said. "In the perfect world the government would respond. But this is, of course, not the perfect world."

Medicare covers over 40 million elderly Americans who are the biggest users of prescription drugs. Yet Medicare does not offer coverage of outpatient prescription drugs. At the same time, Toner said elderly Americans participate actively in politics and are disproportionately represented in the states critical for the Democratic nominations and Congressional elections. She said the Bush administration realized the importance of doing something with health care before the presidential elections.

But lawmakers envision the new version of Medicare in different ways. While the Republican-controlled House passed the legislation that would open Medicare to more and more private health plans, the leading Democrats, who are concerned about the attempt of the Republicans to privatize Medicare, signed on to a bipartisan compromise bill in the Senate, Toner said.

"The Bush administration has discovered … that the idea of health care reform is popular, but the details are deadly if the ideological divisions are intense." Toner said.

Toner, a senior writer in the Washington Bureau of the New York Times, has been covering domestic policy and national politics. She has covered three presidential campaigns and several Congressional elections. Over the course of her 26-year journalism career, she has reported from 45 states. After the 1992 election, she focused on the Clinton Administration's effort to pass national health insurance legislation and the attempt of the Republican Congress to pass its "Contract with America."

"I believe that it's part of our job (as journalists) to humanize those bureaucratic programs to make people understand what they really do," Toner said. "Otherwise the health care debate becomes based on the ideology and fear."