[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 76 (Tuesday, May 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S6300]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          A CRISIS IN MEDICARE

  Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for 
his comments. I wholeheartedly agree with him. I think this is a 
question of leadership, what kind of leadership we are going to see not 
only out of the White House but out of the U.S. Senate.
  I think the rhetoric to date has not served this institution well. 
There is, indeed, a crisis in Medicare. I know there are a lot of folks 
on the other side of the aisle who are saying we knew about this 
crisis, you folks denied there was a health care crisis. We are not 
talking about a health care crisis, we are talking about a Medicare 
crisis. We are talking about a trust fund problem that says there is 
not enough money in the trust fund to be able to fund Medicare past a 
7-year window. That is immediate, that is real, and that is something 
that we have to deal with, and I believe we will only deal with if we 
do so in a bipartisan way.
  If this becomes a partisan issue where one seeks to take political 
gain at the expense of doing something that is responsible action, we 
will not succeed and the trust fund will continue to go further and 
further to the brink of insolvency, and we will be left with not a lot 
of options but very dramatic choices that are going to affect a lot of 
taxpayers and a lot of seniors and the availability of Medicare 
benefits into the future.
  The other comment I keep hearing is, ``Well, this crisis has been 
around a long time and we have known. This is not the first trustees 
report that has been published that says Medicare is in trouble and 
will go bankrupt in a few years.''
  That is true. In fact, over the last 10, 15 years, the average 
solvency of the Medicare trust fund has been about 12 years. Now it is 
at 7, which is I think a low. That is the shortest timeframe that we 
have seen recently where Medicare is in trouble and scheduled to go 
bankrupt. So it is important, but we are usually running around 12, 14 
years as the average.
  So why the big hullabaloo now? The reason for that is, once we get 
through the next 12 years or so, to the year 2010, we can do that 
pretty well by doing a fix. Senator Domenici's budget calls for roughly 
$250 billion in reductions in the growth rate of Medicare over the next 
7 years. That will fix Medicare, again, to make it solvent for about 12 
years from now, which will be about average of where the fund has been.
  The problem with that is not the 12 years, it is what happens in the 
13th, 14th, 15th year and beyond, because after 12 years from now or 13 
years from now that is when the baby boomers begin to retire and that 
is when Medicare really takes off.
  Spending in Medicare just goes up astronomically once the baby 
boomers and that big chunk of the population starts getting into this 
program. So when we look at Medicare funding now, we have to look at it 
with a whole new ball game in mind. We have to preserve the long-term 
funding and solvency of this program through a period where we are 
going to see a rapid escalation, not in the cost of Medicare and 
inflation, but in the number of people in the program.
  So when we look at Medicare now, and I hope we will have this 
informed discussion, that we will look at it over the long term 
recognizing that Medicare costs, just by demographic reasons, are going 
to escalate beyond what we have ever seen before in the history of the 
Medicare program.
  So I am hoping we can have this kind of constructive dialog and we 
will not use brinkmanship for political gain, that we will have a good, 
bipartisan solution to the problem that faces this country.
  I yield the floor.
  

                          ____________________