[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 167 (Tuesday, November 18, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H11509-H11510]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          HISTORY OF MEDICAID

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bishop of Utah). Under a previous order 
of the House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I want to give my colleagues a 
little bit of history about the entitlement programs.
  When I was in the Indiana State Senate in 1969, the Federal 
Government came to Indiana and said if we did not take the Medicaid 
program, they would withdraw $2.5 million in Federal highway funds from 
Indiana. They were, in effect, blackjacking our State, and I went to 
the floor of the State Senate and said we ought to tell them to keep 
their $2.5 million because it will cost us 10 times that much if we 
take the Medicaid program. Boy, was I off.
  The Medicaid program that we thought would end up around $20, $25 
million is now $1.4 billion or 70 times, 70 times what we anticipated, 
and then the Medicare program, which was passed in 1965 I believe, it 
was supposed to cost $3 billion the first year. In fact, it was $3 
billion. In 2001, it was $241 billion. That is 80 times more, 80 times 
more than it was initially.
  The prescription drugs that are in the bill that we are talking about 
right now they said was going to cost $400 billion, that provision. The 
bill has not even gotten out of the conference committee yet, and it is 
already up to $432 billion according to CBO. If we look at the way the 
Medicaid program has progressed over the past 25 to 30 years and we 
look at how the Medicare program has progressed over the past 25 to 30 
to 40 years, we can assume that the prescription drug benefit is going 
to go out of sight as well, and if that happens, if it goes up say 70 
times, like Medicare and Medicaid did, we could see an annual 
expenditure for prescription drugs of $2- or $3 trillion. This thing 
could bankrupt America.
  So we should be looking at another approach, which is the 
reimportation that we talked about, putting competition and market 
prices into effect and competition to keep the prescription drug prices 
down. Seventy-six percent of the seniors in this country already have 
prescription drug coverage. So we are only talking about the other 24 
or 25 percent, and yet we are going to have an all-encompassing program 
when we should only be helping those who truly need the help, but for 
those who really are looking forward to the program, let me just give 
my colleagues some facts, and I hope that there may be some seniors and 
my colleagues who are paying attention to this.
  The premium per year is $420. Then there is an additional $275 
deductible. That is a total of $695 the seniors will have to pay before 
they get a dime, and then they pay 25 percent of the first $2,200 of 
prescription drugs that they buy. That is another $550. So they are 
going to pay $1,245 before they get a dime, $1,245, and then for that 
$1,245, they are going to get $1,650 in coverage.
  That is not the end of it because between $2,200 and $3,600 there is 
no coverage whatsoever. So that is another $1,400 that they will be out 
of pocket. If we add that together, that means if a senior citizen has 
to spend $3,000 on

[[Page H11510]]

prescription drugs or if that is what the cost is, they are going to 
get $1,650 of that $3,000, and for that $1,650, they are going to pay 
$2,645. That is not a good deal for them. It is a very bad deal.
  Granted, some of the impoverished people who are a little bit below 
the poverty line are going to get a better deal than that, but the 
average senior is going to pay more than they are going to get if their 
bill is say a $3,000 prescription drug bill because they are going to 
pay $2,645 for the coverage that they are going to get, and that is 
$1,650 of the $3,000.
  I think that the AARP people and everybody else ought to take a hard 
look at that because I think the American seniors are being misled 
about this. We need to provide prescription drug coverage for those who 
truly need it, who cannot get it because of health reasons or cannot 
afford it, but we should have not a program that covers everybody when 
we cannot afford that. The cost is going to be extraordinarily high.
  What we should be doing instead is working on reimportation, market 
prices and competition, as the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) 
has been advocating for a long, long time. If we did that, we could 
solve the problem, and we would not have to spend hundreds of billions 
of dollars of taxpayers' money to do it.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I really want to applaud the gentleman for 
his work, along with the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), on 
the reimportation of drugs.

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