[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 81 (Tuesday, May 16, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H4963]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                          PRESERVING MEDICARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, my colleague that just spoke 
certainly has eloquently expressed the importance of making sure we 
preserve, protect, and make sure we continue Medicare as we know it 
here in the United States.
  Medicare provides an important source of health security for 32 
million of our Nation's senior citizens and 4 million disabled persons. 
But Medicare spending has been rising 10 to 11 percent a year, and if 
costs continue to soar, everyone will have to pay more.
  Medicare can be preserved, protected, and improved while increasing 
its spending, but at a slower rate of growth. Last year in its annual 
report, the Social Security and Medicare board of trustees projected 
that part A trust fund, the hospital insurance trust fund, starts going 
broke in 1996. Next year the Medicare part A trust fund will spend $1 
billion more than it takes in. The trustees who included Labor 
Secretary Robert Reich, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna 
Shalala, and then-Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, all members of the 
Clinton Cabinet, concluded that the Federal hospital insurance trust 
fund, which pays inpatient hospital expense, will be able to pay for 
only about 7 years, and is severely out of financial balance in the 
long range.
  Again, Just last month, the trustees, including now-Treasury 
Secretary Robert Rubin, replacing Bentsen, issued an equally gloomy 
forecast, which indicated that the part A trust fund would be bankrupt 
by 2002.
  The trustees have called for prompt, effective, and decisive action 
to save the fund from insolvency.
  Despite recommendation of this Presidential commission and the 
disclosure by his own Cabinet officials, President Clinton has failed 
to act on Medicare. What is more, the financial pressure on Medicare 
will only grow when baby boomers start to retire.
  Our efforts to protect Medicare from bankruptcy and to balance the 
budget by the year 2002 are taking place simultaneously. It is crucial 
that the American people understand that Medicare has to be reformed,
 irrespective of the budget deficit. Even if we had a zero deficit 
today, we would still have to take action that is prevention for 
Medicare's bankruptcy. It is a fact if Medicare goes bankrupt by law, 
no payments can be made for hospital care for Medicare beneficiaries or 
from any other trust fund paid services.

  Just a few weeks ago it was not well known about this impending 
disaster because the Clinton administration had swept it under the rug. 
As Medicare travels the road toward bankruptcy, President Clinton has 
been AWOL, absent without leadership. He has even refused to 
participate in a bipartisan effort to save Medicare. Not until the 
Republicans stepped forward to talk openly and honestly about the 
Medicare crisis was anybody aware of the extent of the problem.
  Republicans believe we owe it to our senior citizens to save Medicare 
from bankruptcy. House Republicans have determined to save Medicare by 
using new approaches, new management, and new technologies, to improve 
it, preserve it, and protect it. Congress has an unprecedented 
opportunity to want to take a fundament reform of the Medicare Program. 
Action on Medicare will run parallel to and occur during the same 
period as action on the budget.
  One of the steps we will be taking is to create a Medicare 
preservation task force to look at the various proposals and determine 
what steps need to be taken to eliminate fraud and abuse in the system, 
and to make sure it is more efficient.
  One of the other creative thoughts on the system is to make sure that 
we give our senior citizens incentive to cure the system by paying them 
25 percent of any waste or fraud that they can find in their own bills. 
It would be one way to strengthen and empower our senior citizens in 
making sure a better system is improved.
  House Republicans will increase Medicare spending, from $4,700 per 
retiree today to $6,300 per retiree by 2002. That is a 34-percent 
increase in Medicare spending per retiree. There is no proposed cut in 
Medicare. We will preserve the current Medicare system for seniors. No 
one will be forced into the system. But at the same time we need to 
develop a new series of choices so senior citizens can control their 
own destiny.
  We want to enter into a dialog with the people and to make sure 
Medicare, that is important to all of our seniors, is, in fact, 
preserved.
  We as a nation must undertake this effort to continue the dialog, to 
work together for change, and to make sure that both sides of the aisle 
are working to make sure that Medicare is preserved, protected, and, in 
fact, is even stronger in years ahead.


                          ____________________