[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 67 (Tuesday, May 14, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H4907-H4908]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         REPUBLICAN LEADERS WANT MEDICARE TO WITHER ON THE VINE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is recognized 
during morning business for 4 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, Medicare provides quality health care 
benefits for over 32 million senior citizens, but the Republican 
leadership wants to transform Medicare into a program of substandard 
care.
  The Republican leadership says that Medicare is in crisis--that it is 
now running at a deficit. I would argue that minor adjustments, not a 
major overhaul, could ensure Medicare's solvency. When Democrats were 
in the majority, we made sure that Medicare was being adequately 
funded. In 1982, the Medicare trustees predicted that the Medicare 
trust fund would run out of money by 1986. Obviously that did not 
happen.
  Democrats protected Medicare and maintained a level of quality care 
for senior citizens into the 1990's.
  Now the Republicans are scaring seniors by saying that Medicare is 
again going to go bankrupt in the early part of the next decade and 
using the words like ``reform'' to disguise their efforts to destroy 
the Medicare Program. Senior citizens are not in danger of not 
receiving health care, but Speaker Gingrich still claims that a major 
overhaul is necessary.
  His real motives lie in an earlier speech he gave during last year's 
Medicare debate, where the Speaker said he wanted to see Medicare 
wither on a vine. Only minor adjustments need to be made to ensure 
Medicare solvency. When Democrats were in the majority, Medicare never 
ran deficits. It is a sign of the misguided Republican leadership that 
Medicare has run its first ever deficit in its 31 years as a health 
care program for senior citizens. Enough is enough with Speaker 
Gingrich and his band trying to dismantle Medicare yet one more time.
  The new Republican budget calls for over $168 billion cuts, 
reductions, or

[[Page H4908]]

whatever you want to call them, in the Medicare Program. Basically, the 
Republican leadership is proposing to take money out of the Medicare 
Program for their $176 billion tax break for wealthy individuals.
  Although the amount of money being taken from Medicare is 
significant, the devil is really in the details, because the Republican 
leadership is proposing a major overhaul of Medicare to make it less 
efficient and more costly for seniors. Their proposed calls for 
coopting senior citizens into managed care. I do not have a problem 
with managed care per se, but I do not believe in Speaker Gingrich's 
attempts to force seniors into managed care and call it ``Medicare 
Choices.''
  The only choice that the Republican leadership is giving to seniors 
under this radical Medicare plan is the choice to receive substandard 
health care.
  Where Medicare historically offered patients their own choice of 
doctor, protected against high out-of-pocket costs, and offered a 
guaranteed level of coverage, the Republican leadership's proposal 
would take it all away.
  In addition, the Republicans are again proposed to incorporate 
medical savings accounts--or healthy wealthy tax breaks--into the 
Medicare overhaul. Last year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget 
Office stated that these tax breaks would actually cost Medicare 
several billion dollars. This proposal is largely untested and very 
controversial.
  Unfortunately, this is all a repeat of the failed Republican attempts 
to overhaul Medicare last year. I would urge my colleagues to vote 
against this impractical budget proposal on Thursday and urge senior 
citizens to call on Congress to protect Medicare from further raids by 
Speaker Gingrich.

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