[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 94 (Tuesday, June 24, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H5801]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG BENEFIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the ``Rubber Stamp Congress'' is about to 
go back in session. The President sent the word down from the White 
House: he wants a bill. We have not seen the bill. It has been put 
together in two different committees. We do not know what the Committee 
on Rules is going to put out here, but I can tell my colleagues two 
things about it. It is very clear from what went on in the Committee on 
Energy and Commerce and what went on in the Committee on Ways and Means 
that the bill that will be before us in the next couple of days is not 
going to satisfy what senior citizens really want.
  The senior citizens want no privatization. They do not want Medicare 
to become totally a private insurance operation. They like the program 
run by the government. It has worked very well for many years; not 
perfect, but it has worked very well, and the idea that we are going to 
have a drug benefit and we are going to say, here is some money, we are 
putting it on the table here, and the drug companies are going to run 
in or the insurance companies are going to run in and figure out how to 
give a benefit is simply nonsense, and people know it.

                              {time}  2230

  They do not trust insurance companies. They have had the last couple 
of years dealing with the insurance companies around HMOs and they 
said, Why do we need more of that? How will we feel more safe if we 
know the insurance companies can come in one day and out the next and 
back in another day and another and out, in and out? We will not have 
any benefit.
  They want a guaranteed Medicare benefit that they do not have to join 
a private program to get. They can get it through the government and it 
is just that simple. That is why they have rejected all these private 
HMOs, all of that stuff and have stayed in the basic Medicare program. 
It is partly because the way the insurance companies have treated them.
  Insurance companies went out and promised benefits all over the 
place. They promised drug benefits and everything else. People joined 
and 6 months later they pulled out and left them hanging. So they 
expect the very same thing to happen with this drug benefit.
  If this were something the insurance companies wanted to do, believe 
me they would have done it a long time ago but they do not want to do 
it. So it has got to be in the regular Medicare program. It cannot be 
privatized. And it has to have a guaranteed benefit.
  You can say to people, well, here is $100 a month. Go out and see 
what kind of plan you get offered because you are not guaranteed 
anything in that. In some parts of the country it might buy more than 
it buys in another part of the country. But everybody will have the 
same amount to go out and try and buy with, so how is that going to 
work?
  Why should it make a difference if you live in Tennessee or you live 
in Oklahoma or you live in Vermont or you live in Washington State or 
you live in Illinois? Why should you not be able to have this same plan 
no matter where you are in this country? Suppose you want to leave San 
Francisco and go and live with your children in Kansas City? Suddenly 
you have got to change plans. All of these are issues that come when 
you put it in the hands of a private insurance company.
  Now, the second thing people want is to control the costs of 
medication. I live up in the Northwest. I live up in Seattle. Every day 
people get in their cars, drive across the border into Canada, and buy 
drugs at markedly reduced prices. Now, that went on for a long time and 
now there are organizations that will allow you to fill your 
prescriptions from Canada without ever leaving your home in the United 
States. Thousands and thousands of people are filling their 
prescriptions in Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine and New York and 
Michigan and Minnesota. All the States along the northern tier are 
doing that and it is going down in other States in the country.
  Now, you ask yourself, why are drug costs lower in Canada? I mean, 
what is it about the Canadians that they are better negotiators or what 
have they done? They did one simple thing. They said you cannot charge 
a Canadian, they put this in law, you cannot charge a Canadian more 
than the average of the G-7 countries. Now, what are the G-7 countries? 
France, Britain, Germany, United States, Canada, Japan, and I think 
Italy is the other one. You take all those countries, add the price 
together on a drug and the average price is what Canadians pay.
  All it would take for us to save all that traffic to Canada is to 
pass a law here that grants us the average price of the G-7 countries. 
This bill will not have it. It is a bad bill. And you should look very 
carefully at what you pay and what you do not get.

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