[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 166 (Wednesday, October 25, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S15615]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             NO COMPASSION

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I want to talk about an amendment we 
are going to have coming up on Medicare. Just for the record, let me 
briefly respond to the Senator from Indiana. In all due respect, I do 
not see this compassion. I see $35 billion of cuts in nutrition 
programs.
  I had an amendment on the floor of the Senate that asked my 
colleagues to go on record saying that if, as a result of this 
reconciliation bill with its cuts disproportionately targeted on 
vulnerable children in America, there was more hunger and there was a 
situation where more children went without medical coverage, that we 
would revisit this question next year and take corrective action, and I 
could not get that sense-of-the-Senate amendment adopted. I do not see 
too much compassion in that vote, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I hope we start this debate soon on the Medicare. I 
want to start out by responding to my friend from Iowa. I just quote my 
friend from Illinois, Senator Simon. He has said it once, twice, 10 
times, that to say we are serious about deficit reduction and then to 
have $245 billion of tax giveaways is like saying to somebody we are 
going to put you on a strict diet but first we are going to give you 
dessert. It is a huge contradiction. I do not find people in cafes in 
Minnesota saying to me: Senator Wellstone, we are serious about deficit 
reduction, but would you first give us more tax breaks? That is not 
what I hear from people. They know it is a huge contradiction and that 
you being cannot dance at two weddings at the same time. It makes no 
sense.
  Second point. Mr President, $89 billion is the figure for the trust 
fund. Instead, we have $270 billion. People in Minnesota know how to 
add and subtract. What we have going on here on the floor of the U.S. 
Senate today is no less than an effort to make Medicare the piggy bank 
for tax cuts, or tax giveaways. That is bad enough. What makes it worse 
is it is tax giveaways in inverse relationship to those people who 
least need the tax breaks. Mr. President, that is simply 
unconscionable.
  The third point. This is a rush to recklessness. I was surprised to 
hear my colleague from Iowa talking about the benefits of this for 
rural Iowa or rural Minnesota. I say to my colleague from Iowa, 
understand that in your proposal you have reimbursement to hospitals, 
rural hospitals, 2.5 percent less than rate of medical inflation. I 
tell you right now that our hospitals and clinics in rural America, in 
greater Minnesota, do not have the large profit margin; that is point 
one. Point two, they have a disproportionate amount of their patient 
mix--60 percent, 70 percent.
  What I am saying to people watching this debate is that, in rural 
America, many of the people that come to our hospitals and clinics are 
elderly. Medicare is hugely important for them. That makes up a large 
share of the payments that go to these hospitals. They do not have the 
profit margin. They have a large percentage of the population that are 
elderly, who depend upon adequate Medicare reimbursement, and you have 
in your formula 25.5 percent less than the rate of inflation. In rural 
Minnesota and in North Dakota and in Kentucky and in rural Iowa, the 
rural heartland all across this country, the issue, Mr. President, is 
not just whether we can afford a doctor, it is whether we can find a 
doctor.
  This is a rush to recklessness. This is a fast track to foolishness. 
Ask your providers, ask your nurses, ask your physician assistants, ask 
your doctors, ask your elderly, ask their children, ask their 
grandchildren. What you are about to do is very reckless with the lives 
of people.
  Mr. President, I will tell you something. I just get more than a 
little bit angry when I see this stereotype and hear this stereotype 
about the elderly. You would think that the elderly are a bunch of 
``greedy geezers'' that are traveling all over the country playing golf 
at the swankest golf courses there are. Mr. President, in my State of 
Minnesota, 70,000 seniors live below the Federal poverty line. In my 
State, of the 635,000 Medicare recipients, half of them have annual 
incomes under $20,000 a year. Mr. President, in my State of Minnesota, 
of the 635,000 Medicare beneficiaries, they are paying, on the average, 
over $2,000 out-of-pocket. Right now, for many seniors, catastrophic 
health care costs are a nightmare. They are terrified of prescription 
drug costs.
  Mr. President, what we have here is an effort to make Medicare the 
piggy bank for tax cuts--rather tax giveaways, which flow in the main 
to the highest income citizens of the United States of America. There 
is no standard of fairness behind this proposal. People will see 
through it.
  The second thing that is so unfortunate, so unconscionable, so 
unthinking about this proposal, will be its impact on the people of 
this country. Mr. President, $89 billion is not $270 billion. Please do 
not tell senior citizens their premiums will not go up, their copays 
will not go up, and in no way, shape, or form do you have to worry, and 
your hospitals, clinics, and providers will all get adequate 
reimbursement, and eligibility will not change, and we will just take 
$270 billion out of this health care sector.
  Mr. President, senior citizens do not believe it, they should not 
believe it, they will not believe it. That is why this amendment that 
will be laid down by my colleague, the Senator from West Virginia, 
deserves the full support of every Senator in this Chamber.
  I yield the floor.

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