[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 128 (Thursday, August 3, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H8314]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       WE MUST PRESERVE MEDICARE

  (Mr. MILLER of Florida asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Madam Speaker, the Medicare program is a very, 
very essential program we need to save in this country. It is very 
important in my congressional district in Florida, where I have more 
senior citizens than any other congressional district in the country. 
It is also important not only for the seniors but for the jobs in my 
area, the hospitals, the nursing homes, the home health agencies. So it 
is very essential we preserve this very essential program, and it has 
to be a bipartisan effort.
  The President speaks normally in a bipartisan fashion on Medicare, 
which is the way we should treat that. It is only when he gets into the 
partisan campaign reelection that he gets carried away on Medicare. But 
we start off with a bipartisan agreement that it is going broke. The 
President's own trustees, Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of HHS, the 
Secretary of the Treasury, they all said in their report on April 30 of 
this year, it is going broke in 7 years, and it starts running out of 
money next year.
  Last night in the news the President is saying, according to headline 
news stories, that we need to look at the private sector. Great. We 
need to look at the private sector because the private sector health 
care costs also are not growing nearly as much as is happening in 
Medicare.
  We must preserve Medicare.

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