[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 91 (Friday, July 10, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7921-S7922]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   MEDICARE COMMISSION FIELD HEARINGS

  Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I take this time on the floor to inform my 
colleagues, and others who may have an interest in the fact, that the 
Medicare Commission will be having a field hearing on Monday coming 
outside of Washington in Minneapolis, MN.
  As always, it is the intention of myself as chairman of the Medicare 
Commission, along with my colleague from the House, Bill Thomas, and 
all of the commission members, that we need to get as much information 
from outside of Washington about the Medicare problem as we possibly 
can.
  This effort in bringing the commission to the city of Minneapolis, 
MN, on Monday for a rather very, very full agenda of activities in 
Minneapolis relating to Medicare is to give all of us an opportunity to 
gather information, which will be extremely important in helping us 
make the very difficult but extremely important recommendations that we 
are required by Congress to make to the President, and also to the 
Congress by March 1st of this coming year.
  Our hearing will consist of a site visit in the morning where 
commissioners will choose from one of four sites, three of which will 
have the direct interaction with Medicare beneficiaries. I would like 
to cover some of the sites that we will be visiting so people will know 
exactly what this commission is going to be doing.
  We will have a chance to visit the Wilder Senior Services Clinic, 
which is a Minnesota Senior Health Options Clinic, which is really a 
demonstration program now being run by the Minnesota Department of 
Human Services. It serves seniors who find themselves in the unique 
position of being eligible for Medicare, and also being eligible for 
Medicaid at the same time. These people are so-called dual 
beneficiaries who can get their health coverage from two separate 
programs. And how this particular operation is handling it is something 
that I think we can benefit from seeing.
  The second site visit that we are going to take the commission to is 
a Fairview University Medicare Center, the Mayo Clinic, the world 
famous medical institution in Minneapolis, where our commissioners will 
have the opportunity to really tour an integrated care clinical site 
and observe telemedicine demonstrations with the Mayo Clinic in a rural 
facility outside of the city, and also a visit with providers and 
beneficiaries and also administrators.
  Third, the commissioners will be able to also visit Medtronic, which 
develops and manufacturers medical devices to treat cardiovascular and 
neurological disorders.
  The idea is to tour these facilities to look at the impact that new 
technology, of which the United States is a world leader in producing, 
has on the future of Medicare.
  Clearly, as we are able to produce more sophisticated equipment 
facilities to treat health care beneficiaries in this country, it is 
going to have a direct effect on the Medicare Program, and hopefully 
for the better.
  The final site visit opportunity we will be taking is the United 
Health Care Research Center, an Institute for Health Care Quality, 
where we will tour their facilities and learn about how United Health 
Care gathers and analyzes patient data to evaluate medical outcomes and 
cost-effectiveness as a treatment.
  It is very important that we study how various forms of health care 
affect outcomes, both from a health standpoint, as well as from a cost 
standpoint.
  Then, beginning at noon at the Minneapolis Convention Center, our 
commissioners will then hear from people who will make presentations to 
our committee in the form of three panels.
  The first panel we will hear from is the Buyers Health Care Action 
Group, which is interestingly a coalition of 27 large, Twin-Cities-
based self-insured employers--companies like 3M, General Mills, and 
Honeywell.
  This panel hopefully will give the commission an opportunity to hear 
from private companies regarding how they purchase health care for 
their employees and what the result has been for their employees, as 
well as what the results have been for their companies.
  The second panel will be a panel of managed care plans to talk about 
their experience in the managed care market in Minneapolis, which has 
had managed care around longer than most places in the country.
  With the debate on Medicare both in the Congress and in the public in 
general I think it is important that we look at some of them and try to 
understand better how they are working in providing quality health care 
and reduced costs for Medicare beneficiaries.
  The third and last panel we will hear from is current and future 
beneficiaries on information that they need and use in making health 
care decisions. It is really important with the new proposal coming out 
of the Health Care Financing Authority, HCFA, coming October 1st. 
Medicare is not going to be like it used to be. People who are Medicare 
beneficiaries are going to get some choice options. They are going to 
have different decisions to make about whether they want to go into 
managed care.
  It is very important for seniors and their families to understand 
that grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, and others are going to have to make 
some different decisions about their health care. While this can be a 
little bit frightening, I think we should look upon it as a real 
opportunity to give them more choice and ultimately better services 
than they currently get under Medicare.
  We can be very proud of what Medicare has done. Medicare is not that 
great a plan in the 1990s. It doesn't provide eyeglass coverage; it 
doesn't provide prescription drugs; it doesn't provide long-term health 
care. Most beneficiaries think it is a wonderful program, and, indeed, 
it is. But it is not nearly as good as most health plans in the country 
today that are private plans which provide generally a lot more 
benefits to the beneficiaries than Medicare does.
  So we are going to be looking at how people get their information and 
what information they need in order to make these choices.
  The rest of the afternoon is going to be devoted to public interest, 
to really have the commission sit and listen to Mr. and Mrs. America 
and tell us what they would like to see in Medicare for the future.
  We have 2 hours set aside for audience participation. We call this 
session a ``Call for Solutions'' where we have invited ordinary 
citizens from the Minnesota region and area to submit their ideas and 
recommendations for improving Medicare.
  In addition to the field hearing that we will be having in 
Minneapolis, we will also be continuing to explore other ways to get 
input from the public. We don't have to visit every city and every 
State and every county in America to hear from America. In this 
century, as we move to the 21st century, we are going to be making use 
of teleconferencing, video conferencing. Commission meetings that we 
have had so far have been covered in full by C-SPAN. We have a national 
web site. We have had 13 commission and task force meetings since March 
6th, all of which have been open to the public for their information.
  I think we have a very ambitious schedule, as I have just outlined, 
for the Monday field hearings in Minneapolis.
  I urge my colleagues to continue to be mindful of what we are 
attempting to do. If they have suggestions, we are open to receiving 
those suggestions. Hopefully, we will have their participation as we 
draft recommendations for the full Congress and for the President,

[[Page S7922]]

so we can make the reforms necessary to preserve, protect, and even, 
indeed, improve Medicare for future generations.

  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and make a point of order 
a quorum is not present.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________