[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 161 (Wednesday, October 18, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H10302-H10303]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            MEDICARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, unlike the gentlewoman who just 
spoke from Florida, I support our Medicare reform proposal.
  Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of use of the cut word. I recently 
had a very interesting conversation with a hospital administrator from 
my district who said, you are going to be cutting Medicare. We got to 
talking a little bit, and it seemed that his budget was about $100 
million, and $65 million of that came out of Medicare. I asked him, 
were we going to reduce your amount coming from Medicare? No.
  Mr. Speaker, the truth is, under the administration's proposal, the 
growth to that particular hospital in Medicare over 7 years was going 
to be 100 percent, that that hospital would end up getting about $130 
million, and we are talking about reducing the increase to that 
hospital from $65 million to about $100 million over the next 7 years.
  I ran on one of my platform issues being that we will never, ever be 
able to rein in out-of-control growth in so many of these Federal 
programs if we continue to call reductions in the rate of growth of a 
program a cut. If we are going to say a 10 percent per year increase is 
our base line and if you are going to lower that to 6 percent per year, 
that is a cut. We will never restore solvency to the Medicare Program, 
we will never restore solvency to Washington, DC, and we will end up in 
bankruptcy.
  Prior to coming to this House, I was a practicing physician. Indeed, 
50 percent, a half, of the people that I took care of as a doctor were 
Medicare patients. Indeed, I continue to see patients when time allows 
when I go back to my district, many of whom are senior citizens. Though 
50 percent of my patients were Medicare patients, only about 45 percent 
of my revenue came from those. Because, you see, Medicare reimburses 
lower than the private sector.
  But even though Medicare reimburses lower than the private sector, 
the rate of growth in the private sector is substantially less. Indeed, 
I was part of the committees that got together and drew up this 
Medicare plan, and one of the most amazing things we found out was that 
in some of these programs in the private sector they are actually 
reducing their premium.
  You have a situation where you have health care plans in southern 
California where they are lowering by 1.5 percent the charges to the 
companies in those areas, and we have here a government-run plan that 
is steaming along at 10.5 percent, and we have a Medicare plan that the 
Medicare trustees are telling us is going to be bankrupt. So we have 
come up with a proposal.
  There have been a number of outrageous, outlandish, inaccurate claims 
made by the opposition tonight. One of them is tat we are doing this is 
Medicare to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
  Well, let me tell you about our tax program. It is a $500 per child 
tax reduction for families with kids. I do not know how that translates 
into a tax cut for the rich. We paid this spring for every single penny 
in those tax reductions to those working families by reducing 
discretionary spending.
  All of the money in this plan goes to maintain the solvency of the 
Medicare plan. It is going to be insolvent. The administration, the 
Democrat administration itself has told us it is going to be insolvent.

  Now, I am getting a lot of phone calls from seniors in my district, 
and I think they are great phone calls. A lot of them have been drummed 
up by AARP, and I have to say I think this is wonderful that we are 
having this debate, it is wonderful we are having this dialog.
  One of the questions I get asked is, are you going to increase my 
copay? It is currently at 20 percent. Medicare pays 80 percent. I hear 
that you are going to increase the copay. The answer to that is in this 
House bill we are going to vote on tomorrow, no, we are not going to do 
that.
  Another thing that I have seniors calling me about, they are asking 
me, are you going to increase the deductible? And the answer to that 
is, again, no. The deductible is going to stay the same. It is going to 
be $100.
  I have seniors calling me and saying, are you going to force me into 
an HMO? Are you going to restrict my access to physicians' care? And 
the answer to that, again, is no.
  If you want to choose one of these Medicare Plus plans, you can. We 
are 

[[Page H 10303]]
not going to force any seniors into anything they do not want to be in. 
This is a good plan. It waves Medicare. I recommend that all of my 
colleagues support it.

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