[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 11753]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      WOMEN AND PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

  (Ms. SOLIS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, women in this country need a Medicare drug 
benefit now. In the State of California, 56 percent of Medicare 
recipients are women. These elderly women have on the average spent 
about 10 percent of the cost for prescription drugs there, but this 
year alone their costs went up about 20 percent; and for people from my 
district particularly, this is a very, very extreme hardship.
  Most are on fixed incomes and cannot afford those costs, and they 
believe the plan that is being proposed by the Republicans today will 
actually make their lives worse. I know that because their plan will 
help to benefit HMOs and insurance companies and it is a farce. They 
are saying that our current drug benefit program is a Soviet-style form 
of government. That cannot be farther from the truth.
  When I go into my senior citizen centers, the first thing people ask 
me is, Hilda Solis, you are my representative, why is there not a 
better benefit program so I can pay for my treatment that I need to 
control my diabetes, to get my insulin, to pay for the things that I 
need to survive?
  Let us do the right thing today. Let us vote for a Democratic 
substitute that is fair for all people.

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