[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 32 (Tuesday, March 21, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1482-S1483]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             PRESCRIPTION DRUG COVERAGE FOR SENIOR CITIZENS

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, for the last 3 months I have come to the 
floor of the Senate on more than 20 occasions to talk about the need 
for this Congress to pass legislation that would cover senior citizens' 
prescription drug needs under Medicare. I have said again and again 
that this country can no longer afford not to cover prescription drugs.
  Before we broke for the work period at home, I talked about a case, 
for example, from Hillsboro, OR, of a senior citizen who had to be 
placed in a hospital for more than 6 weeks because he could not afford 
his medicine on an outpatient basis. Just think about that wasted 
money. The older person could not get help on an outpatient basis for 
his medicine, and the doctor said we have no choice but to put that 
person with a leg infection in the hospital so he can get prescription 
drug coverage under Part A of the Medicare program.
  Today, I brought with me a letter from an elderly woman in Phoenix, 
OR. She receives $1,100 per month in Social Security. Her prescription 
drug bills run $1,000 a month. She is 74 years old, and she wrote me: 
What can you do to help?
  I think it would be a tragedy for this Congress to not go forward on 
a bipartisan basis and enact meaningful relief for the Nation's older 
people who are getting clobbered with these prescription drug bills. 
Again and again, we are hearing from seniors in these instances where 
they have been hospitalized because they could not afford their 
medicine on an outpatient basis, where when they are done paying for 
their prescription drugs for the month, they have only a couple hundred 
dollars left to pay for food, heat, and housing. In a country as strong 
and prosperous as ours, we can't allow this kind of tragedy to 
continue. I think it is absolutely critical that this be addressed on a 
bipartisan basis.
  For many months now, I have teamed up with the Senator from Maine, 
Ms. Snowe, on a bipartisan bill. We use marketplace forces to ensure 
that older people have bargaining power in the private sector to be in 
a better position to afford their medicine. Right now, these HMOs get 
big discounts; they have lots of clout in the marketplace--HMOs and the 
private sector plans. If you are an older person who walks into a local 
pharmacy, you in effect have to subsidize those big buyers. You get 
shellacked twice. Medicare doesn't cover prescription medicine and, in 
effect, in the marketplace you subsidize the people with clout.
  The Snowe-Wyden legislation uses private sector bargaining power, 
along the lines of what we have in the Congress with the Federal 
Employees

[[Page S1483]]

Health Benefits system, so that the dollars seniors use for private 
health insurance are pooled, and they have real negotiating power so 
they are in a position to get more reasonable prices for their 
medicine.
  Some have said we ought to just put the Government in charge of this, 
sort of have rate regulation. Well, I think that would be a big 
mistake. The biggest concern I have about that approach is it would 
cause a lot of cost shifting. You could have the Government be the big 
kid on the block and drive the system through the Health Care Financing 
Administration, but you would put all the costs onto somebody who is 27 
or 28 and is working hard trying to get ahead, and their prescription 
drug bill would have gone up because the Congress didn't address this 
Medicare issue in the right way.

  Fortunately--and I think he deserves enormous credit--Senator Daschle 
has been working to try to reconcile the various approaches. He has 
talked with me about this issue, almost on a daily basis, in an effort 
to try to have the Senate come together and enact meaningful relief. He 
stakes out principles that I think can be supported on both sides of 
the aisle--principles such as making sure the program is voluntary, 
that no senior citizen be required to do anything; if they wanted to 
keep their current coverage, they would be allowed to do that. We want 
to make sure the action we take on prescription drugs is consistent 
with long-term Medicare reform. I think the approach I have advocated, 
in terms of creating more choices and more options in the marketplace, 
is consistent with responsible Medicare reform.
  We have talked about bargaining power in the private sector, the way 
the responsible private insurance companies have acted. I think that is 
something that will attract Members on both sides of the aisle. I think 
Senator Daschle is absolutely right in terms of trying to bring the 
Senate together to find the common ground and pass meaningful 
legislation.
  We will have a chance this week to make the first significant step in 
the Senate toward passing this legislation. As the Budget Committee 
meets--and I sit on the Budget Committee, and Senator Snowe sits on the 
Budget Committee--we will have a chance to ensure that in this budget, 
which is not just facts and figures but, really, the hopes and 
aspirations of the American people--we, in effect, set aside the funds 
needed to go forward and enact a meaningful prescription drug program 
for the Nation's older people.
  I don't want to see this Congress adjourn without making this 
important addition to the Medicare program. There is not a single 
expert in the health field--Democrat or Republican--who doesn't believe 
that if you designed the Medicare program from scratch today, you would 
not cover prescription drugs. They all think it is something that is 
essential to meaningful Medicare reform. I intend to keep coming back 
to this floor again and again and again throughout this session of the 
Congress to talk about prescription medicine.
  For about 7 years, before I had the honor of being elected to the 
other body, I was director of the Gray Panthers at home. We believed 
that prescription drug coverage in Medicare was important then. But, 
frankly, it is vastly more important now because the drugs of this 
century essentially aren't just drugs that, as we saw back then, are 
primarily to help people when they are sick; the new drugs are 
absolutely key to helping folks to stay well. They help folks to lower 
blood pressure and cholesterol. It is a way to hold down Medicare 
costs. Because of the result of folks being able to stay healthy, they 
don't land in the hospital and incur enormous costs that are engendered 
by Part A of the Medicare program.
  I am going to keep coming to the floor of this body to talk about the 
need for bipartisan action on prescription drugs, to urge the Senate to 
follow the counsel of Senator Daschle. I know Senator Snowe and others 
on the other side of the aisle are interested in finding common ground. 
I am going to keep urging that we work on this issue and not adjourn 
this session of Congress until we have provided this relief to the 
Nation's older people. I come again with a whole sheaf of cases of 
older people who are writing and asking what we can do to help. They 
are asking Congress to act this year, not put this off until after the 
election and use it as a political football again.
  I think we owe it to the Nation's older people and their families to 
address this issue, as Senator Daschle suggests, in this Congress; that 
we come together as Members of the Senate to make this improvement to 
the Medicare program that is long overdue. I intend to keep coming back 
to the floor of this body again and again and again reading these 
direct and very poignant accounts about why this coverage is so 
important until we get this legislation enacted.
  I yield the floor.

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