[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 161 (Wednesday, October 18, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H10299]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 WE ARE GOING TO FIX MEDICARE TOMORROW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bunn of Georgia). Under a previous order 
of the House, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Chrysler] is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CHRYSLER. Mr. Speaker, the trustees' report clearly does say, and 
you can read it in it, that there is $140 billion that is needed for 
part A and $140 billion that is needed for part B. That is $280 
billion. Those are the trustee numbers.
  Now to come up with an irresponsible number of $90 billion, which has 
been done for the last nine times in order to save Medicare, is in fact 
just enough to save Medicare for the next election, which has been what 
has been going on for the last nine times and usually raising taxes to 
save it for those last nine times, and so Members ask why are we doing 
this so fast? Well, the trustees' report also says that we are going to 
start spending $1 billion more than what we take in next year. That 
means starting October 1 of, in fact, this year.
  And they also say we have only had one hearing on this. Now I know of 
38 hearings that we have had in the House, 18 of them in the Committee 
on Ways and Means. I have testified personally at three of those 
hearings, and in fact I remember there were at least two of those 
hearings out on the lawn by the people from the other side of the 
aisle.
  One billion dollars more than what we take in next year and totally 
bankrupt by the year 2002. That is why we need to save, and protect, 
and preserve Medicare, and it is absolutely irresponsible not to put 
forward a plan to do that, and only in Washington, DC, will they call a 
$1,900 increase a 40-percent increase, going from $4,800 to $6,700, 
clearly that is an increase, only in Washington, DC will they call that 
a cut.
  Now my dad used to say to me that liars have short legs, which simply 
means you cannot outrun the truth, and the truth will prevail.
  Now you can keep your Medicare System under the better Medicare 
System just exactly as it is with no increase in co-pays, no increase 
in deductibles, and no increase in premiums. But let me tell you what 
the Medicare System is. It is a 1964 Blue Cross plan that has been 
codified into law, and senior citizens deserve better. Certainly they 
deserve better than the 30-year-old health program. They deserve 
choice, choices like managed-care-type systems, choices such as point-
of-service, choices such as medical savings accounts, which is a free-
market solution to the health care program in this country and puts the 
consumer back in the loop, which is what has been missing all of these 
years from health care. It has been too long that insurance companies 
and doctors and hospitals have been telling us what is reasonable and 
customary for health care, and it is time that we had the consumer back 
in this health care process, this health care equation.
  Someone said that the seniors had choice when they have the Medicare 
System. Well, certainly they can still have their Medicare System, but 
more and more doctors are opting out of that Medicare System as it has 
been created in the past. What kind of a choice is that?
  We also do need to do something with the waste, fraud, and abuse. 
Forty-four billion dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse, and this better 
Medicare System in fact addresses that issue.
  We also appoint a commission to study the long-term solutions for the 
Medicare System when the baby-boomers come into this system beyond the 
next 7 years.
  And now there has also been a lot said about tax cuts. First thing we 
have to understand, that we are talking about the people's money, not 
the Government's money, and what we are saying is that, if you have two 
children, that is a thousand dollars that we want you to keep, hold 
onto it, keep it in your pocket, do not send it to Washington. This is 
not money we have in Washington that we are going to send back to 
someone because, if you keep it, you will always make a better decision 
how to spend it, a much better decision than government, and also 77 
percent of the tax cuts that we are talking about are for people that 
earn less than $75,000 a year, and it would not matter whether we had a 
balanced budget or not, we would still have to fix Medicare, and that 
is what we are going to do tomorrow when we vote to pass the better 
Medicare System.

                          ____________________