[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15071-15072]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 A HATE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH MEDICARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the Republicans have just never 
really liked Medicare. Medicare was enacted in 1965, despite the 
overwhelming opposition of Republicans in Congress. Only 13, fewer than 
10 percent, only 13 of the 140 Republicans in the House in those days 
backed Medicare. Bob Dole voted ``no.'' Gerald Ford voted ``no.'' The 
soon-to-be minority leader, John Rhodes, voted ``no''; Strom Thurmond 
voted ``no,'' Donald Rumsfeld, a Member of Congress then, all leaders 
in their party, in the Republican Party, voted against the creation of 
Medicare. They were unapologetic at the time. Most of them are 
unapologetic about their opposition and their willingness to undercut 
Medicare today.
  Senator Bob Dole, 20 years later as a candidate for President 
representing the Republican Party, told a conservative group called the 
American Conservative Union, he said, ``I was there, fighting the 
fight, one of only 12 voting

[[Page 15072]]

against Medicare.'' Actually, I do not know where he came up with 12, 
there were many more than that, but one of a few, he said, voting 
against Medicare. The Reagan administration some years later led the 
first substantive swings at Medicare. With the help of congressional 
allies, he succeeded in cutting Medicare payments to doctors and 
raising seniors' Medicare out-of-pocket expenses. But it was not until 
Republicans took over the House in 1994 the Republican leadership had a 
realistic chance at obtaining their long-held goal of killing Medicare. 
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, almost immediately after being sworn in in 
January, led a failed bid to cut Medicare by $270 billion to pay for a 
tax cut for the wealthiest people in the country. Sound familiar? Cut 
Medicare, free up the dollars, so you can give a tax cut to the richest 
5 percent, richest 6 percent of people in this country.
  Among the Gingrich Medicare plans, a key supporter was then Governor 
of Texas, George W. Bush. That same year, Gingrich offered a candid 
overview of the Republicans' Medicare strategy and said this: ``Now, we 
didn't get rid of it in round one because we just don't think that is 
politically smart. We don't think that is the right way to go through a 
transition. But because of what we are doing,'' he said, ``we believe 
it is going to wither on the vine.''
  The privatization extremists' next gambit was launched toward the end 
of the Gingrich era, hidden within the innocent-sounding 
Medicare+Choice program. The Mediscare privatizers told us that HMOs 
were so efficient compared to government-run Medicare they could 
provide both basic and enhanced benefits like prescription drugs for 
less than traditional Medicare spent on basic benefits alone. HMOs 
initially received a windfall on the taxpayers' dime, because they only 
wanted to insure the healthiest people, that did not cost much; and 
that is how they selectively enrolled those healthiest seniors. When 
that windfall was erased by providing the cost of extra benefits, HMOs 
came back to Congress asking for more money and abandoned their 
original efficiency rhetoric and brazenly charged that Medicare had 
``shortchanged'' them.
  Did we cut our losses? Did Congress cut our losses and end the 
Medicare+Choice program? No. For the Medicare privatization crowd in 
Congress, a private failure was still better than a public success, so 
Congress again diverted scarce taxpayer dollars from the traditional 
Medicare program, taking money from the 85 percent of the people who 
are in traditional fee-for-service, old-time, regular, it-works 
Medicare and shored up the failed insurance scheme HMO+Choice system.
  Now, with the same George W. Bush in the White House who championed 
the Gingrich Medicare cuts in the mid-1990s to pay for tax cuts for the 
rich when he was Governor, the time is right, President Bush seems to 
think, for Republicans to now launch a full-scale attack to privatize 
Medicare. The Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Committee on 
Ways and Means are considering radical bills this week, voucher bills, 
Medicare privatization bills that will end Medicare as we know it, end 
the Medicare that has been with us for almost 40 years, almost 4 
decades, and will end it by the year 2010.
  The fact of the matter is the Republican bill will replace Medicare's 
dependable, affordable and universal coverage with a voucher program. 
Millions of seniors, already burned by Medicare+Choice abandonments, so 
many seniors have seen their Medicare HMOs go out of business, leave 
the State, leave the counties as they have in Lorain and Summit and 
Medina counties in my district, those same seniors are going to be 
asked to one more time put their faith in Medicare+Choice, in Medicare 
HMOs. Benefits and premiums would vary from county to county, ending 
the equity embodied by Medicare for a generation, and the Republican 
bill would cover only a small fraction of the Medicare costs.
  The only question is whether the majority of Americans who recognize 
a success when they see one will let Republicans get away with putting 
the final stake in Medicare's heart.

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