[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 115 (Tuesday, August 16, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 16, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
            WHY THE CLINTON-GEPHARDT BILL IS BAD FOR SENIORS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Miller] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  MILLER of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today concerning why the 
Clinton-Gephardt bill is bad for senior citizens. For the past 19 
months since I first entered Congress, I have held over two dozen town 
hall meetings throughout my congressional district, I have received 
over 10,000 letters and phone calls, and I have talked to thousands of 
constituents, mostly senior citizens, because my district in Florida 
has the largest number of senior citizens of any congressional district 
in the United States. My area of Sun City, FL; Port Charlotte, FL; 
Venice, Sarasota, and Brandenton, FL has the largest percentage of 
seniors in the Nation, and they are upset.

                              {time}  1840

  They are concerned and they are scared. They like what they are 
getting under Medicare now, and they do not think the change is better 
for them.
  Poll after poll has shown that the seniors are very concerned. It was 
very surprising last week when the AARP came out supporting the 
Clinton-Gephardt bill. Last year when Mr. Clinton first made his 
presentation on health care in September here in the House, and that 
was a point of popularity for the Clinton bill, the AARP in their 
bulletin had a little coupon to ask their members to send in to see 
what they said about the Clinton bill last September and October. They 
published the results in their monthly bulletin in December and 82 
percent of the 25,000 people who had sent in response said they did not 
like Clinton, and that was when the bill was very popular in the 
country.
  What I would like to do now is identify five very specific reasons 
why Clinton-Gephardt is bad for senior citizens.
  First of all, we have global budgets and price controls, and this 
amounts to explicitly rationing health care. The plan mandates in 1999 
to in effect have zero growth in Medicare spending. Even countries that 
ration their health care cannot get down to zero growth. What it 
mandates is that in 1999 that the growth in Medicare spending will be 
no greater than the growth of the gross domestic product, the GDP, 
which is about 3 percent or so right now. It does not take into account 
the fact that we are going to have more Medicare people eligible in 
1999. No. It is just based on some economic factor that is based on the 
business cycle rather than on the needs of senior citizens.
  Next is rationing of health care. Seniors are the ones most 
victimized by rationing of health care. In other countries where they 
have socialized medicine, in Great Britain, for example, they ration 
health care by, for example, kidney dialysis is limited to senior 
citizens over age 65.
  The Congressional Budget Office, when they evaluated Mr. Clinton's 
plan, said, ``There was reduced access to new high cost medical 
technologies in the Clinton plan.''
  This morning's Wall Street Journal had an interesting editorial by 
Robert Goldberg who talks very specifically about the rationing of 
drugs under the Clinton-Gephardt bill as a mere formulary identified 
under the Clinton-Gephardt bill, and they list drugs that are 
permitted, and if it is not on the list, senior citizens cannot have 
that drug unless the physician is willing to go through the bureaucracy 
and make special requests and such.
  There are going to be drug caps put into effect by the year 2005, 
which sets the maximum amount of money that can be spent for drugs. 
That is rationing of health care for senior citizens.
  The third issue is reduced choice. Under the Clinton-Gephardt bill 
States are given the option, they are given the option to make Medicare 
people go under the State-run program. If New Jersey decided to develop 
a State-run program, the State of New Jersey would have the choice to 
force all Medicare people to get out of Medicare and go into the State 
of New Jersey's program, no choice about it for senior citizens. That 
is not the type of choice seniors were expecting in this plan.
  Also the plan under Clinton-Gephardt encourages seniors do get into 
HMO's, and this is going to really affect the lower income seniors.
  Increased taxes. There is no free lunch. We would have thought 
Congress would have learned with the catastrophic back in 1988 and 1989 
that you cannot just increase taxes and have senior citizens say OK, 
that is OK. For example, in this bill there is the drug coverage, which 
is a good idea. But what it is is a $500 deductible for seniors, and it 
is 80 percent coverage after the first $500 they have paid. They are 
going to pay $111 a year tax on that. Even if you have a great plan or 
supplement from say General Motors or someone else, you are still going 
to pay that $111 whether you use it or not. So there is a $111 tax that 
you are going to pay to get drug coverage.
  There is a higher cigarette tax. I do not smoke, so it will not 
bother me. But if you are a senior and you smoke, be prepared to pay 
higher taxes.
  And there is the employer mandate. In my district, there are a lot of 
seniors that have part-time jobs and the employers are going to be 
discouraged from hiring those seniors part time because they will have 
to provide them with health care.
  The fifth reason is draconian Medicare cuts, $480 billion in Medicare 
cuts. We are at a very scary time in this health care debate, scary, so 
no one knows what they are going to do.
  Let us put this off and have a rational, intelligent debate on how to 
have health care, and come back in January and make it the focus of the 
election in 1994.

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