[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 82 (Thursday, June 6, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H5939]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             CUTS IN MEDICARE FOR TAX BREAK FOR THE WEALTHY

  (Mr. MILLER of California asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, we have seen the Republicans 
do everything they can to divert the public's attention for what their 
plan would do to Medicare. In order to save Medicare, the Republicans 
tell us they have to take away senior citizens' choice of doctors; they 
have to force them into managed care, where they do not want to go, 
where they lose control of their health care for themselves and for 
their spouse. They want them to pay the overcharges for doctors who 
charge them too much for medical procedures. They want to take away 
their right to have a Medigap insurance policy so they will not have to 
pay out-of-pocket charges to those same doctors and hospitals, maybe 
now forcing them to pay as much as 40 percent in out-of-pocket charges.
  And they want to do all that for simply one reason, and that is to 
gather up the resources of Medicare and give a tax break to the 
wealthy, not gathering up the resources of Medicare to shore up the 
system, to bolster the system, to make it solvent, but to take away 
these resources, to take away the money of the senior citizens, to 
charge them more, to simply transfer that to a tax cut.

                              {time}  1015

  There is another way. The other way is the way President Clinton 
proposed, which is to shore this system up for 10 years.

                          ____________________