[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12291-12292]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



 IN OPPOSITION TO H.R. 4680, REPUBLICAN PRESCRIPTION DRUG BENEFIT BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 19, 1999, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bentsen) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BENTSEN. Mr. Speaker, later this week the Republican leadership 
will bring to the floor a bill purporting to be a new prescription drug 
benefit for America's senior citizens. In reality, it is a bill which 
is fatally flawed, providing a political fig leaf for Republicans while 
providing false hope to the senior citizens we all represent who are 
feeling increasingly pinched by ever rising prescription drug costs.
  Mr. Speaker, the Republican bill fails both in its structure and its 
scope, and it as well as any plausible alternative as proposed by 
Democrats is subject to an artificial monetary constraint imposed by 
the Republicans in their budget resolution which is both disingenuous 
and hypocritical.
  In their desire to do anything but create a real prescription drug 
benefit under Medicare, the Republicans' Rx proposal creates a Rube 
Goldberg structure that involves subsidizing insurance companies to do 
what they do not want to do while creating a new government bureaucracy 
in Medicare. The Republican plan is modeled after the Medicare Choice 
structure of enticing private insurers to take over the

[[Page 12292]]

administration and delivery of benefits in lieu of Medicare for a 
profit. It pays insurers to create a prescription drug plan, but, while 
it limits the coverage, it does not limit the premiums that can be 
charged to senior citizens. And it empowers this new bureaucracy, the 
Medicare Benefits Administration, to increase the taxpayer subsidy to 
the insurance companies if they are unable to develop a plan which 
meets both the basic structure and is affordable. Thus, monthly 
premiums to seniors are allowed to rise far higher than the $40 a month 
assumed by the authors of this flawed bill, and insurers are entitled 
to higher taxpayer subsidies if they cannot make enough money.
  Mr. Speaker, your own press secretary told the New York Times this 
Sunday that the insurance market for prescription drugs for senior 
citizens would develop because under your leadership's plan it would 
be, quote, awash in money. For the record, Mr. Speaker, that is the 
taxpayers' money. The fact that the Congressional Budget Office scored 
this proposal at all is astounding given the open-ended nature of the 
program. But perhaps they see something the Republican sponsors missed 
or are not telling us; that is, the program will not cost too much 
because health insurance companies do not like it and will not do it. 
And like Medicare Choice, once you start restricting the Federal 
subsidy, profits dry up and insurance companies pull out. Just witness 
the exodus from Medicare managed care after the 1997 Balanced Budget 
Act restricted the ever increasing adjusted average per capita cost.
  The Republican leadership's prescription drug plan were it to ever be 
enacted into law would fail because it is designed in such a way that 
senior citizens will not be able to afford the premiums and insurance 
companies will not be able to make a profit. Moreover, it spends 
taxpayer dollars to subsidize insurance companies to do what they do 
not want to do and what Medicare can do and that Congress will 
ultimately restrict.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that the Republicans give an opportunity for a 
fair substitute that brings the benefit of prescription drugs to 
America's senior citizens.

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