[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 88 (Monday, June 16, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H5388]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            MEDICARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, tonight I rise as Chair of the Congressional 
Hispanic Caucus Health Task Force and want to call the attention to the 
imposed impact that the so-called Medicare reform will have not only on 
the Latino community but across the Nation as well. Minority Medicare 
beneficiaries including Latinos are among the fastest-growing portions 
of this population, and they currently represent about 16 percent of 
the total Medicare population; but by the year 2025, Latinos are 
expected to account for 18 percent of the elderly population.
  Yet time after time we ignore the needs of the community by creating 
packages that help HMOs and the private insurance industry and not 
necessarily our seniors. Just look at the proposed Republican Medicare 
prescription drug plan. They want to strip Medicare's foundation by 
forcing seniors to change plans, change doctors, change pharmacies, and 
even change the drugs that they take every 12 months. Not only are the 
enrollment procedures extremely complex, now we are asking our Nation's 
elderly to make incredible changes that many will feel uncomfortable 
about making into a program that does not even make drugs affordable 
for our seniors; and nearly 60 percent of Latinos live with families 
with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty level and 87 percent of 
the uninsured, that means working poor families, Latinos coming and 
trying to receive some type of health care benefit. Yet how can we even 
realistically say that we are attempting to improve the lives of all 
American seniors when the Latino elderly population, which is the 
fastest growing, will be the most susceptible in this privatized plan?
  There are more than 214,000 Latino Medicare beneficiaries right now 
residing in the State of California that I represent. Fifty-five 
percent of Latino seniors covered under California's Medicare program 
report having little or no information about Medicare, including access 
to a toll-free Medicare number; and I say that specifically because we 
need to improve access to different communities in their respective 
languages so that we can really access and have the benefit of having 
all seniors participate in these programs.
  Who is going to care for these beneficiaries when the Republicans 
impose unaffordable premiums, require spending of $250 before they 
receive any help at all? In some cases in my district that would be 
disastrous. It would mean not being able to pay their rent or be able 
to buy additional medicine that they need because $250 is a large 
amount for people in my district. It even prohibits, get this, the HHS 
Secretary, Secretary Tommy Thompson, from negotiating better prices. 
Hello? I thought that is what his job was there for. He was supposed to 
watch out for our interests.
  We cannot ignore the 25 percent of Latinos compared to 10 percent of 
non-Latino whites who do not have supplemental insurance along with 
traditional Medicare, and in my district Latino seniors continuously 
share with me their concerns about the monthly Medicare premiums and 
the costs of prescription drugs. We have to make the prescription drug 
benefit an advantage for all Americans regardless of where they come 
from and regardless of what language they speak, and we need to help 
our country's seniors and people with disabilities navigate through an 
affordable system made easily available and meaningful to them and 
protecting their benefits. We need to protect the choices that they 
currently have because that is what really matters at the end of the 
day. We need to provide physician choice, pharmacy availability, and 
prescription drug selection. Let us not strip the security from our 
seniors. Let us work toward a program that helps improve all the lives 
of our seniors.

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