[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 77 (Wednesday, May 10, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4674-H4675]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  MEDICARE AND MEDICAID CUTS WILL PUSH MANY SENIORS BELOW THE POVERTY 
                                  LINE

  Mr. WAXMAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, the level of Medicare and Medicaid cuts 
would gut health care for the elderly and the poor leading to rationing 
of health care to those people to whom we promised health security: 
$400 billion over 7 years; that is a breathtaking amount. That will 
mean cuts in Medicaid for the frail, elderly, and nursing homes, 
leaving them to languish there without care, if they are lucky enough 
to get into a nursing home at all. Community, at-home-nursing services 
will be cut, denying them that assistance as well. Hundreds of 
hospitals and clinics will be forced to close because they will not be 
able to afford care to the newly under-insured as well as all the 
uninsured of which there are 42 million in this country, a problem the 
Republicans even refuse to acknowledge exists. Doctors will turn 
Medicare patients away as their payment levels to them start resembling 
those for Medicaid, and greater costs will be borne for the elderly who 
live on fixed incomes, 
[[Page H4675]]  many of whom will be pushed below the poverty line.
  Mr. Speaker, this budget is cruel, it's cynical, and it's mean.
  

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