[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 161 (Wednesday, October 18, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H10291-H10292]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           MEDICARE OVERHAUL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Greenwood] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, earlier this evening the gentleman from 
California, Mr. Fazio, made the statement that the Republicans do not 
want Americans to fully understand our Medicare reform bill. I would 
like to challenge that assertion because in fact it has been our 
experience and my personal experience that what we need to do is 
precisely make sure that Americans, particularly America's senior 
citizens, understand our Medicare present reform bill. When they do, 
they like it. And they like it very much.
  That has been my experience. It was my experience this evening. I had 
a letter that one of my staff members placed on my desk from a 70-year-
old gentleman in my district that was very upset. He had been listening 
to my friends on this side of the aisle. He said he was having a hard 
time sleeping because he and his wife had been in and out of hospital. 
He heard we were going to take his Medicare away. So I said to him, let 
us go through it one step at a time. And I said, do you like your 
Medicare just as it is? He said, yes, I am very happy with it.
  I said, well, under our plan, you will keep your fee-for-service 
Medicare just as it is. And you and your wife will be able to go into 
the hospital and go to the doctors next year and the year after that 
and the year after that just as you have been now. In fact we are going 
to make sure that the system is there for you.
  I said, we are not going to raise your deductibles. Oh, you are not? 
No, we are not. We are not going to raise your co-pays. You are not? I 
heard them say that you are. Well, we are not. What are you going to 
raise? Are you going to raise the portion that I pay for my part B? I 
said, no, we are not going to raise the portion that you pay. You pay 
31.5 percent now. And you will pay 31.5 percent next year. And your 
friends and neighbors will pick up the other 68.5 percent next year 
just as they have this year.
  I said that 31.5 percent is going to go up a little bit just as it 
did last year, the year before that. But your COLA's, your Social 
Security COLA will go up by even more than that, so your Social 
Security check that you receive next January will be bigger than the 
Social Security check that you are receiving now and will receive 
through the end of the this year. So you are going to have more money 
in your pocket at the end of the day next year, when this plan takes 
effect, and exactly the same health care that you chose now.

  We find that, when we go to focus groups, when we go to town meetings 
and we explain in detail this plan, the senior citizens thank us. They 
like it. They have nothing to fear and they know it. And if they do not 
know it now, they certainly will know it once the President signs the 
bill and it goes into effect.
  Let me talk about some of the disinformation that has been difficult 
for us to deal with.

                              {time}  2215

  Members of the minority party have stood up all night, and they stood 
up for weeks and weeks and weeks, and talked about Medicare cuts, and, 
as we have said over and over again, no one is going to cut Medicare. 
We are going to increase the expenditures per capita on Medicare 
beneficiaries by 40 percent over the next 7 years. That is a whopping 
increase, it is a generous increase, and it is more than enough money 
to restore and preserve the system and continue the same benefits 
package.
  So we do want Americans to understand that because when Americans 
understand that and they understand that we are going to spend more on 
them in each of the next 7 years, and not less, the are comforted, and 
they need to be comforted because they have been told a lot of 
falsehoods.
  We have heard people say from the other side that we are going to 
take away. One of the gentlewomen from the other side of the aisle 
said, ``cutting health care,'' cutting health care as if a single 
senior citizen in this country would not have access to exactly the 
same health care services when our plan is in effect as it is now. 
Simply not true. Every senior citizen in this country will be able to 
stay in the fee-for-service program and get precisely the same health 
care benefit next year as they do this year.

  Now, that is an indisputable fact that is not even subject to debate, 
and yet I hear Members from the other side of the aisle over and over 
again talk about cutting health care. I walked past the sort of ginned-
up candlelight vigil outside the Capitol tonight, and I heard the 
minority leader of this House, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. 
Gephardt], talk about Republicans doing away with Medicare, and I shook 
my head. I shook my head and thought how could a Member of the U.S. 
Congress utter those words knowing deep in his heart that no one in 
this body would ever contemplate for a moment doing that. Certainly, 
this Member, whose mother and father he deeply loves and whose mother 
and father are Medicare recipients, would never do anything to reduce 
their package, their benefits. We have heard 

[[Page H 10292]]
over and over again the talk about forcing seniors into managed care, 
forcing seniors into managed care. We do not do that. What we do is we 
preserve the system. We preserve it not only for this generation but 
the next, and I hope we all vote for it tomorrow.

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