[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 165 (Tuesday, October 24, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H10696-H10697]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              MAKE NEEDED CHANGES IN MEDICARE LEGISLATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Deutsch] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. Mr. Speaker, I am going to speak tonight on something we 
did last week and we are probably going to do again on Thursday, and 
that is to pass a bill that basically eliminates Medicare in this 
country. We will pass it again as part of the reconciliation bill on 
Thursday, and it will go over to the Senate.
  The reason I am speaking about it is with the faint hope that my 
colleagues on the majority side will try to make some changes. I just 
doubt that will happen between now and Thursday, but the good news is 
it is a bicameral legislature, and the Senate will have the possibility 
to deal with this, and ultimately this is a piece of legislation that 
will go in front of the President. The President has issued a statement 
he will veto this legislation. I urge him 

[[Page H 10697]]
and I think all Americans need to urge him to follow through on that 
veto.
  I think it is worth it to really focus on the facts on this issue. I 
am going to talk about three facts and just go through them very 
clearly, very specifically, because this is a case that the more that 
the American people know about what the Republican majority is doing to 
Medicare, the more disturbing, the more distressing that it is.

  It is truly as bad as people's worst nightmare in this country. The 
first thing is this whole debate has started because my Republican 
colleagues say Medicare is going bankrupt in 7 years. We have to do 
something to save Medicare. It is going bankrupt in 7 years.
  Well, one of the things that this chart points out, and this I think 
really says it in black and white, is if you look at the 30 years that 
Medicare has existed, 12 of those 30 years Medicare had an actuarial 
life less than what it has today. In fact, in several years it had only 
a 2-year actuarial life. What Congress has done is made adjustments to 
the Medicare system like any health care insurance program, which is 
what Medicare is, and has made adjustments to correct those actuarial 
deficiencies.
  So the first big flat out lie that my Republican colleagues have made 
in this legislation is this is unprecedented. That is just not the 
case.
  The second flat out lie that they have made is that it requires $270 
billion to correct. Where did the $270 billion number come from? There 
are actuarial, nonpolitical, technical people whom evaluate the 
solvency of the Medicare program. No one has come up with any numbers 
anywhere near $270 billion. Where did that number come from?
  Where it came from, it was a derived number from the budget process. 
The Republicans, as they were drawing up their budget, came up with a 
hole of $270 billion. And the only place that they went to, they could 
have gone to Social Security, but they were a little bit more fearful 
of that, they went to Medicare for a $270 billion gap to fill the hole.
  What is in that hole? Well, there is a variety of things in that 
hole, including a military budget above what the President has 
requested and what the Joint Chiefs of Staff and divisions of different 
branches of the military has requested. But they are also including tax 
breaks of the worst kind that are outrageous from this government's and 
from the people of this country's perspective.
  Special interests at the worst level; it is a list that gets longer 
and longer. Who did what for who? College football coaches, convenience 
stores, certain specific companies get tax breaks in this legislation, 
on the backs of 36 million Medicare recipients, who worked hard and 
played by the rules, and yet if this legislation passes and is not 
vetoed, would in fact occur.
  So that is the second big lie, which is a $270 billion number. And 
the third and final big lie that I will mention is this whole idea of 
choice. My Republican colleagues consistently say that the Medicare 
proposal that they pass, and they will pass again this week, provides 
choice. They continuously say it provides choice for Medicare 
recipients.
  What it provides is a false choice. It provides a false choice, 
because what will inevitably happen, and this legislation is set up to 
make this happen, is that for anyone who remains in traditional 
Medicare, the out-of-pocket costs will be astronomical, 4, 5, 6, 7, 
8,000 a year for seniors. To put it in perspective, 75 percent of the 
seniors in this country, their income is less than $25,000 a year, so 
we are talking about $4,000 out-of-pocket for someone in that category. 
It just does not work.

                              {time}  1845

  So what will end up inevitably happening is that 90-plus percent of 
seniors will be forced into substandard HMO's. I urge everyone to both 
write their Senators and urge the President to veto this legislation.

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