[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 168 (Wednesday, November 19, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H11629]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      WHAT SENIORS WILL REALLY PAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, we are going to be voting before 
the end of the week on probably one of the most sweeping reforms in 
Medicare in the history of the program, and it is going to involve 
prescription drug coverage for seniors. There is a lot of 
misunderstanding about the bill, mainly because the bill has not been 
reported out of the committee yet; but we have gotten a synopsis of the 
bill, and I think it is important to see what this is really going to 
do.
  Tonight, and I am going to be doing this every night, tonight I have 
a chart that shows what seniors will really pay on average. This is an 
average. If we look at the chart, the annual premium that seniors will 
pay every year is $420, and then they have a $275 deductible which 
totals $695. Then they will pay 25 percent of the next $1,925. The 
government will pay 75 percent, and that is a figure of $481. If we add 
those together, that is $1,176. And when we take out the amount that 
the senior is going to pay as opposed to what the government is going 
to be pay, for that $1,176, the senior will be getting $1,444.
  After that there is what they call the doughnut hole: from $2,200 to 
$5,044 there is no coverage. So seniors will be required to pay on 
average about $2,844. If we add the other costs I enumerated, we are 
looking at a total cost to seniors on an annual basis, if they get 
about $5,000 in expenditures, they will pay $4,020 and the government 
will pay $1,444 of the total figure.
  The fact of the matter is the senior will be out $4,020, and the 
government's part will be $1,444. I think it is very important that we 
make certain seniors understand this before we pass this bill because I 
think most seniors believe they are going to get first dollar coverage 
or get very broad coverage in a very short period of time, and this 
will be a big disappointment to them, in my opinion.
  The other thing I would like to point out is the cost of Medicare and 
Medicaid.
  When I first got elected to the Indiana General Assembly, and I 
served in the Indiana State Senate, we were blackjacked by the Federal 
Government into taking Medicaid. At that time they told us it would 
cost about $20 million per year for the Medicaid bill.

                              {time}  2115

  Medicaid in Indiana this past year was $1.3 billion for our share and 
$2.5 billion for the Federal Government share. If you just take the 
Indiana share, you will find that it is about 70 times what the initial 
cost was of Medicaid. So it went up 70 times since 1969. If you look at 
Medicare, Medicare was passed in 1965 and in 1967 Medicare cost, across 
the country, $3 billion. In 2001, Medicare cost $241 billion. I think 
it is very important that we put all this in perspective, because 
Medicare went up 80 times since 1965, Medicaid went up 70 times since 
1969. And so we can anticipate that there will be a rapid growth in the 
prescription drug coverage as seniors find out what they are not 
getting and what they expected.
  I would like to say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, 
seniors need to get the facts. The fact is they are not going to get 
the benefits that they think they are going to get, and if they do get 
the benefits that they think they are going to get, the cost is going 
to be much higher than the $400 billion over 10 years they have talked 
about. As a matter of fact, I have been told, and I cannot verify this, 
that CBO has said it is going to cost $432 billion over the next 10 
years, and the bill has not yet been reported to my knowledge out of 
committee.
  I think this is very, very important. AARP, the senior organization, 
has said this is a very beneficial thing for seniors, and it is a good 
first step. I think they realize that when seniors find out about this, 
they are going to demand more. I can understand that. So what will 
happen, I believe, is what happened in 1988 when we passed the 
catastrophic health care bill. Seniors thought they were getting a good 
deal. I voted against that bill. There were 11 of us that voted against 
it in 1988. We were castigated by senior groups and seniors across the 
country because they said we did not care about them. But a year and a 
half later, when seniors found out what was in the bill, they were 
chasing Dan Rostenkowski, the chairman of the Committee on Ways and 
Means, down the street with umbrellas, beating on his car saying, what 
have you done to us and the bill was repealed within a short period of 
time.
  I am going to make a prediction tonight. If we pass this bill in its 
present form, I believe that the seniors are going to be very upset not 
only with the Congress, but with AARP and other groups that say this is 
a very good first step. Because when they find out that the benefits 
that they anticipate are not there, they are going to be very angry 
just like it was in 1988. I would like to say to my colleagues, let us 
do what absolutely must be done to help seniors. Seventy-six percent of 
the seniors have a plan where they get their prescription drugs 
already. Twenty-four percent do not. We ought to help the 24 percent 
who do not. Those are the ones that we need to be helping. If we did 
that, I think we would solve a large part of the problem.
  I will be back tomorrow night.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rogers of Alabama). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. 
Norton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  (Ms. NORTON addressed the House. Her remarks will appear hereafter in 
the Extensions of Remarks.)

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