[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 51 (Friday, April 8, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H2545-H2546]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        MEDICARE VOUCHER PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Mrs. Capps) for 4 minutes.
  Mrs. CAPPS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my complete 
disapproval for the way this House is being run by the Republican 
majority.
  To put it bluntly, the majority is neglecting its duty to address the 
biggest issues facing this country--creating jobs and implementing a 
fair and sensible budget that makes investments in our people while 
bringing down the deficit.
  For example, to date, this majority has not brought to the floor a 
single piece of legislation to help create jobs. Instead, we've seen 
bill after bill that would actually increase joblessness, including 
their omnibus spending bill, H.R. 1, which would cut nearly three-
quarters of a million American jobs.
  While it is clear that we must take aggressive action to bring down 
the Federal deficit, it shouldn't come at the expense of guaranteeing 
health care to our seniors. Yet that's exactly the case with the new 
Republican budget proposal, which uses our deficit as an excuse to 
achieve their long-held goal of ending Medicare as we know it today.
  Medicare has been a very successful program to ensure seniors have 
guaranteed access to affordable, quality care. It has its problems, to 
be sure, and they must be addressed, but we should not throw the baby 
out with the bath water. Before deciding to essentially junk Medicare, 
as the Republican budget would do, let's go back in time a little.
  Before Medicare, seniors were the most likely group to be uninsured. 
Barely 14 percent of them had health insurance coverage at all. Before 
Medicare, almost one-third of all seniors were in poverty, and 
countless others would have been if not for the large sacrifices borne 
by their families. Before Medicare, seniors needed to make a false 
choice--go to the doctor and pay out of pocket or put food on the table 
and pay the bills. It also wasn't for seniors' lack of interest in 
being insured; it was because insurance companies simply had little 
interest in insuring a group of people they deemed too expensive to 
cover.
  Let's be honest. The older you get, the more likely you are to need 
health care. We are not a cohort that insurance companies are exactly 
fighting each other to cover.
  It is clear that Medicare has been absolutely critical in providing 
access to quality care at an affordable cost for seniors. It is 
responsible for helping lift so many of our parents and grandparents 
out of poverty, giving them peace of mind after a lifetime of work. It 
has also freed up their children as well, giving them the opportunity 
to invest in the future of their own children instead of having to 
worry about whether or not their parents are going to get the health 
care they need.
  It is a remarkable success story, one that has helped Americans 
prosper, but this Republican budget proposal announced this week 
essentially throws it out the window.
  First, it reopens the doughnut hole for today's Medicare 
beneficiaries, like for Beverly, from Morro Bay, who, thanks to the 
Affordable Care Act, no longer has to worry about how she will afford 
her important prescription medications if she reaches the doughnut hole 
again this year. Their plan will roll back the new preventative 
screenings and wellness checkups that the law provided for with no co-
pays at all. Their plan would roll back important cost-containing and 
quality-improving measures from the program, and it repeals resources 
in place to reduce fraud and abuse, making this program more costly and 
less solvent.
  But the centerpiece of the Republican proposal is the plan to 
privatize this critical program and end Medicare as we know it.
  Let's be crystal clear: This isn't a reform. It isn't a tweak. It 
isn't a natural progression. It is nothing more than the end of the 
very program which, right now, guarantees health care coverage for 
America's seniors.
  Medicare is much like Social Security, which guarantees a pension for 
seniors regardless of the twists and the turns of the market and our 
economy. Medicare guarantees health care coverage for our seniors. It 
guarantees it. But the Ryan budget bill ends that by turning Medicare 
into a voucher program with no guarantee of coverage--none at all. 
Instead, each senior would get a set amount of money to purchase a 
private insurance policy at an amount not high enough to start with and 
less each succeeding year. In fact, each year, the voucher would cover 
less and less.
  These are the important factors of this budget, which is why we 
cannot accept it. We must save Medicare.
  Who'll pay the rest of the cost of this care?
  If you guessed ``my grandmother or my grandfather'' you'd be right.
  And this is how the Ryan budget ``saves'' money.
  It saves the federal government money by shifting the cost directly 
onto seniors.
  In fact, while the government would save about $600 per beneficiary, 
the cost to the senior would jump by an estimated $12,500 a year in 
premiums, co-pays, and other out-of-pocket expenses--and that amount is 
expected to grow over time.
  That estimate is about double the average annual out-of-pocket cost 
for a senior in Medicare today.

[[Page H2546]]

  The CBO is clear in its warning about this program: Some seniors will 
forgo insurance all together, while others will find barriers to 
services that might save or improve their lives--both by plans not 
covering particular services or through such high costs that seniors 
forgo the care they need.
  The bottom line--seniors will pay more for health insurance--much 
more--than they do today.
  Some will get substandard coverage because they can't afford anything 
better.
  Some won't be able to afford a policy at all, so they will forgo 
coverage and care.
  The Republican budget has the wrong priorities.
  It focuses on our families and communities for cuts, while doing 
nothing to root out waste in our tax system--like the tens of billions 
in subsidies for oil, gas and coal companies, or those that go to giant 
ethanol corporations.
  And it continues the tax cuts for the wealthiest among us as well and 
even calls for more.
  These priorities are all wrong . . . they are dangerous . . . and we 
must stand up against them.
  I urge my colleagues to oppose the Republican Budget that will end 
Medicare as we know it.
  Let's make responsible choices so that we can lower the deficit 
without doing so on the backs of our seniors.

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