[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 16 (Wednesday, January 29, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H239-H240]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         MEDICARE PRIVATIZATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, last night the President said that 
seniors deserve enhanced preventative benefits and prescription drug 
coverage.
  Seniors do deserve these benefits. What they do not deserve is being 
patronized, manipulated, and short-changed, particularly when the 
quality of their health care and their future financial security are at 
stake.
  When the President said that seniors happy with the current Medicare 
system should be able to keep their coverage just the way it is, we all 
applauded. What he obviously means is this: If they are unwilling to 
leave Medicare and join an HMO, then they actually do not deserve 
preventative benefits and drug coverage, and they will not get any.
  The President has every right to push his privatization agenda, 
Medicare privatization, Social Security privatization, but not by co-
opting an issue as emotional and as important as prescription drug 
coverage. The President cannot go unchallenged when he mischaracterizes 
Medicare as a failed program.
  My friends on the other side of the aisle continue to lambast, 
continue to criticize, continue to ridicule the Medicare program as a 
failed program so that then they can justify their goal of privatizing 
it.
  The President in his budget, in his orders from the White House at 
HHS, recently dropped provisions to serve the general public, the 
Medicare public, in seminars asking questions, learning more about 
Medicare so that when seniors were overcharged, they would have some 
recourse. The President and his people at HHS are doing all they can to 
cut those Medicare services to make Medicare function more poorly so 
that Medicare does not serve the public as well, justifying their 
privatization of Medicare.
  The retirement safety net was not put in place by Democrats because 
we wanted to make the Federal Government bigger, and it should not be 
dismantled by conservatives just because they want to make Federal 
Government smaller. The safety net was put in place because the private 
sector could not make a profit offering health insurance to seniors; so 
they did not offer it. That is why when Medicare was begun in 1965 by a 
Democratic President, Democratic House, Democratic Senate, with only 11 
Republicans supporting the vote on Medicare. That is why it was 
created, because 35 years ago 50 percent of seniors in this country had 
no health insurance. Today almost every senior has health insurance 
because of one of the greatest programs in American history: Medicare.
  But what the President of the United States basically said last night 
as he sat in this Chamber looking in this direction, looking out at 
Members of Congress, looking at the Ambassadors, looking at his 
Cabinet, the Supreme Court, looking at people in the gallery, the 
President said basically if they want prescription drug benefits, they 
have got to join an HMO to get it. And that is the story of the 
President's Medicare privatization. If they want prescription drug 
coverage, if they want preventative care, then they have got to join an 
HMO, and that is the President's efforts to privatize Medicare.
  So I ask my friends on the other side of the aisle, I ask people 
listening today in this Chamber to understand that the President's plan 
to privatize Medicare, that the President is using the prescription 
drug benefit to try to get his plans to privatize Medicare into place.

                              {time}  1500

  Again, Mr. Speaker, this whole debate is about the President saying 
if you want a prescription drug benefit, then you have to drop out of 
regular Medicare and join one of those HMOs. In some parts of the 
country there are no HMOs available. In many parts there are. It means 
you have to give up your choice of physician.
  The President talks about choice, but when you are talking about real 
choice, it is all about fee-for-service traditional Medicare. You can 
choose your doctor, you can choose your hospital, you can choose your 
provider.
  Under the President's plan, you have a choice. Your choice is stay in 
Medicare and not have a prescription drug benefit, or you can take a 
prescription drug benefit and join an HMO.
  The Democrats' prescription drug plan is to include a prescription 
drug benefit inside traditional Medicare. Medicare works very well for 
the public. It works even better if there is a

[[Page H240]]

decent voluntary prescription drug plan as part of Medicare.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask this House to reject these privatization plans and 
instead put a prescription drug benefit inside Medicare, and continue 
to serve the Medicare population as well as Medicare has in the past.

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