[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 16]
[House]
[Pages 21516-21517]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       PRESCRIPTION DRUG BENEFIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, my intention is to talk about the need for 
a prescription drug benefit for seniors under Medicare, but when I 
listened to the previous speaker, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
McGovern), he made it a point about the President's speech on Sunday 
night about how this $87 billion in new funding that the President is 
requesting for Iraq is going to have a direct impact on domestic 
programs, and I have to say it was very disturbing to me today to read 
in the New York Times in the lead story on the front page that some 
Republicans were suggesting that because of the additional needs for 
Iraq as outlined in the President's speech that maybe some of them 
would now reconsider whether they would support a prescription drug 
benefit for seniors.
  Let me tell the Members the Republican leadership in this House as 
well as the President have been saying for over 2 years that they are 
going to provide a prescription drug benefit for seniors and there is 
no reason not to do it. The notion that somehow now we do not have 
enough money for it is bogus, given the fact that the Republicans 
passed all these tax cuts, a series of three tax cuts that now have put 
us into a deficit. In addition to that, the fact of the matter is if 
they were willing, which they have not been, to provide some kind of 
cost controls or some requirement that part of the Medicare 
prescription drug program would assume that the Secretary would 
negotiate lower prices for discounts, we would be able to afford a good 
prescription drug benefit.
  I do not want to hear and I am not willing to listen to those 
Republicans who are going to tell us over the next few months that we 
cannot afford a prescription drug benefit. It is their own policies 
that have put us into this deficit situation. It is their own policies 
that make it difficult for us to negotiate any kind of price reductions 
or put any kind of price controls in effect because they oppose it 
ideologically.
  It is interesting because earlier this week there was another article 
in New York Times that talked about the VA programs and how successful 
the veterans program has been in trying to keep costs down for 
prescription drugs, and that is because they negotiate price 
reductions. They insist as part of the VA program that when they buy 
drugs in bulk that they get a discount price. We should be doing the 
same thing here for seniors in general. We should provide a 
prescription drug benefit that takes care of all seniors, regardless of 
their income as long as they are eligible for Medicare and also a 
prescription drug program that goes directly to the issue of price by 
saying that the Medicare administrator, the Secretary of Health and 
Human Services, should be empowered and should be mandated to reduce 
prices by negotiating price reductions because he now represents 40 
million seniors who are part of the Medicare program.
  Instead, the Republicans, because I know the conference is now going 
on between the House and Senate versions of this Medicare prescription 
drug bill, we hear the Republicans still insisting on the fact that 
they want to privatize Medicare, give senior citizens a voucher, and 
tell them that they have to go

[[Page 21517]]

out and buy private insurance at some point in the future if they want 
to continue with their Medicare program in general. And then we are 
told that if they want to get any kind of prescription drug program 
under the Republican proposal, that they have to join an HMO because if 
they do not join an HMO or some kind of private program, they will not 
get the prescription drug benefit. That is bogus.
  Today in the New York Times there was an article on page A-21 where 
they talked about fewer people on Medicare are being dropped by HMOs 
this year and the head of the Trade Association for HMOs was so proud 
of the fact that this year, or I guess next year, they estimate that 
only 39,000 to 40,000 Medicare beneficiaries will be dropped by their 
HMOs. So what? What about the fact that so many other seniors have been 
dropped by their HMOs in the last few years? It is estimated in this 
article that only about 11 percent of the 40 million seniors are now in 
HMOs or getting some kind of a drug benefit through their HMO. How in 
the world are the Republicans going to propose saying that the only way 
they get a prescription drug benefit is if they join an HMO, when only 
about 11 percent right now of seniors are in HMOs and fewer and fewer 
every day because even with this drop in the number that are 
essentially being dropped, there is still another 40,000 that will not 
be able to keep their HMO as a means of continuing with their Medicare?
  The bottom line is, and this is what the Democrats have said, there 
is an obligation on this Congress and this President to pass a 
prescription drug bill that provides a prescription drug benefit to all 
seniors, whether or not they are in an HMO or not, and the Medicare 
prescription drug proposal should not be used as an excuse to privatize 
Medicare in general.
  There is going to be a motion to instruct this week. I believe it is 
going to be proposed by my colleague from Maine, to make the point that 
the conferees should not require people to have to join an HMO to get 
their prescription drug benefit and that we should not be moving down 
the road of privatizing Medicare, and we need to pass that motion, but 
we also need to have some kind of way of dealing with the issue of 
price. Otherwise, we are never going to be able to afford this 
prescription drug benefit.

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