[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 162 (Thursday, October 19, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H10312-H10313]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    MEDICARE CUTS WILL HURT SENIORS

  (Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks and include 
extraneous material.)
  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, Congress will vote today on the 
Republican plan to cut the $270 billion in Medicare to pay for that 
$245 billion, and my colleague from California, they are stepping up to 
the plate, but they are being greedy. Even though the Medicare 
trustees, as the gentleman said, said we need to deal with Medicare, 
they only said we needed to deal with it for $89 billion and not $270 
billion.
  Speaker Gingrich's Medicare plan takes three times as much to pay for 
that tax cut of $245 billion. The simple truth is that they do not need 
the $270 billion from Medicare to make the program healthy. They are 
cutting Medicare to pay for the tax breaks.
  Do not be fooled. Seniors will be hurt by Speaker Gingrich's plan. 
Number one, premiums will double, forcing many seniors to choose 
between their choice of health care and other living essentials. The 
choice of doctors will be limited.
  Earlier this year my Republican colleagues talked about the 
Washington Post editorial. Before they vote today, I hope they would 
read today's editorial, where it talks about what they say, ``Who Pays 
if Medicare Is Cut?''
  I include that editorial for the Record.

               [From the Washington Post, Oct. 19, 1995]

                      Who Pays if Medicare Is Cut?

       The great question--you could say gamble--with regard to 
     the Republican plan to reform Medicare is whether it will it 
     succeed in fostering competition that will drive down the 
     cost of care, or will simply shift some large part of the 
     cost from the government back to recipients, thereby creating 
     a much more limited program--a half-Medicare. No one knows 
     the answer. What the House and Senate are being asked to do 
     in considering their respective versions of the plan in the 
     next two weeks is to choose between risks. One is the risk of 
     not acting to curb the enormous projected cost of the 
     program, which threatens over time to break the bank--and 
     which the Republicans are right to have taken seriously and 
     sought to address. The other is the risk of shifting too much 
     cost to lower-income elderly and disabled people who can't 
     bear it and who may therefore be left without the care that 
     they both need and currently have.
       The Republicans have argued that the cuts they propose 
     would fall mainly on hospitals, doctors and other providers, 
     and only to a lesser degree on Medicare recipients 
     themselves. But it isn't certain that this is how it 

[[Page H 10313]]
     would work out. The government itself would pay the providers less. But 
     the plan then also makes it possible for the providers to 
     recover if they want by charging the recipients more. The 
     insurers and providers with whom the recipients would deal 
     would not be required to absorb the cuts. Rather, to the 
     extent that competitive pressures permitted, they would be 
     free in various ways to pass them on; the recipients then 
     would have to absorb them.
       Our own sense is that, as the bills are written, this risk 
     is too great. That's particularly the case because the 
     Republicans would decimate Medicaid, the backstop program for 
     the needy elderly and disabled. The house the Republicans are 
     building has plenty of roof over cost but not enough floor 
     under care. Much has been made in recent days of the deals 
     that House Speaker Newt Gingrich is said to have struck with 
     the American Medical Association and other provider groups to 
     ensure their support for the plan. The assorted deals are 
     small potatoes compared with this structural defect in the 
     plan. It has to be fixed to make the plan worth passing.
       The plan has, while we're at it, one other provision that 
     would cost billions of dollars while serving no good purpose 
     and ought to be killed outright. We have in mind the medical 
     savings accounts the proposal would permit. Instead of paying 
     a recipient's bills or giving the recipient a fixed amount to 
     help buy an insurance policy or enroll in a managed care 
     plan, the government would put that amount in a savings 
     account in the person's name, partly to buy a high-
     deductible, so-called catastrophic insurance policy, the rest 
     to be used for other purposes. After a certain amount had 
     accumulated, if the recipient didn't need or want to use the 
     money for health care he could use it to take a vacation, buy 
     a boat--you name it.
       Healthy and better-off people who could afford the risk 
     would be drawn to this. The government would be putting more 
     in their accounts per year than they currently take from 
     Medicare, thus adding to costs and leaving less to care for 
     the sick and less well-off. It's a skimming operation, and it 
     ought to be dropped without a second thought.

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