[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 84 (Tuesday, June 10, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H5158]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H5158]]
            ANOTHER REPUBLICAN ATTEMPT TO UNDERCUT MEDICARE

  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, Republican leadership will soon 
unveil legislation representing yet another attempt to undercut 
Medicare. As they did last year, my Republican colleagues will try to 
coopt the prescription drug needs of Medicare beneficiaries to secure 
fundamental changes, privatization, in the way they receive coverage. 
My Republican friends will use stand-alone drug coverage as a lever to 
try to privatize Medicare. The irony is that their proposal is being 
marketed as a kinder, gentler take on Medicare reform. Kinder and 
gentler, that is, than the President's breathtakingly callous ``let 
them eat cake'' approach.
  You have got to give the President and Republicans credit. By playing 
good cop, bad cop, they are poised to set the clock back 38 years to 
the beginning of Medicare, 1965, and force seniors back into the 
private insurance market for their coverage. It is a shining moment for 
compassionate conservatism.
  The President acclimated Congress and the public to the most 
irresponsible of Medicare privatization gambits by proposing to force 
seniors who need drug coverage out of Medicare and into HMOs. Blatantly 
exploiting the most vulnerable seniors to achieve the purely 
ideological goal of Medicare privatization is so offensive, in fact an 
egregious breach of the public trust, that virtually any alternative 
would look good in comparison.
  When Republicans announced they planned to reprise their stand-alone 
drug plan proposal, everyone applauded because at least seniors would 
not be, as the President wanted initially, forced out of Medicare 
altogether in order to get drug coverage. Unfortunately, there is more 
than one way to gut Medicare, and the Republicans have found it. You 
can force seniors into HMOs, you can coerce seniors into HMOs, you can 
lure seniors into HMOs. You can, as my Republican colleagues are 
proposing, require seniors to buy stand-alone private prescription drug 
plans if they want drug coverage. It would be difficult to come up with 
a less efficient, less reliable, or more costly way to deliver drug 
benefits than to build an individual market for them. Yet that is what 
they are proposing.
  The only reason to manufacture this new insurance market is to 
privatize Medicare. Here is how you do it: you give seniors two 
options. They can juggle traditional Medicare, plus a supplemental 
policy, plus a stand-alone drug coverage; or they can join a private 
insurance plan that offers all three. Once you sweeten the pot by 
offering enhanced preventive and catastrophic benefits at more cost 
under the private plans, you have effectively set traditional Medicare 
up for failure.
  Make no mistake about it. Every Member of Congress who votes for the 
Republicans' Medicare prescription drug coverage plan is voting for 
Medicare privatization. You know and I know that seniors will not be 
better off choosing between and among private insurance drug plans just 
as they have not been better off choosing between this Medicare+Choice 
HMO or that Medicare+Choice HMO. Health insurance is not like a car. 
You do not customize it to fit your life-style. Good health insurance 
covers medically-necessary care delivered by the health care providers 
we trust. Bad insurance simply does not. Good health insurance lasts. 
Disappearing health plans and shrinking benefits are the hallmarks of 
the private insurance experiment that is already part of Medicare, 
Medicare+Choice. Instead of alleviating uncertainty, Medicare+Choice 
plans breed it.
  Proponents of privatization argue Federal employees have a choice of 
private health plans, but the fact that FEHBP, the Federal program, 
features lots of private health plans does not mean it is a better 
system than Medicare. Federal employee health plan premiums grew 11 
percent in 2003. Social Security income grew by 4 percent. Seniors 
earned $14,000 on average last year. There is not much cushion in that 
for unpredictable premium increases as you will get under privatized 
Medicare.
  Let us not forget that my Republican friends want to means-test 
Medicare benefits. So goes the coverage guarantee. So goes Medicare's 
practical value to every enrollee regardless of income. And so goes 
popular universal support for the program that we know and respect, 
known as Medicare. If the Republicans' prescription drug coverage plan 
is signed into law, Members of Congress who voted for it will be able 
to look back and take credit for undermining a popular, successful, 
public insurance program that covers 40 million people and that ensures 
your parents access to reliable, high-quality care and replacing it 
with another iteration, another experiment of the failed 
Medicare+Choice program.
  I do not know how any Member of Congress, Mr. Speaker, can look their 
constituents in the eye after voting to sabotage a public program, 
Medicare, that anchors the financial security of our Nation's retirees. 
I hope a majority of us will stand up for Medicare and block any 
attempt, covert or overt, to destroy it.

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