[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 21]
[House]
[Page 29110]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2100
               UNDERMINING THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF MEDICARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Tancredo). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I want to associate myself with the 
remarks of the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone). This week is 
one of the most important weeks that I have seen in the 16 years I have 
been in the Congress because we are dealing with an issue that is about 
the question of what is in the common good.
  We have no problem in this country believing that fire departments 
and police departments and road systems and schools are issues of the 
common good. We all pay our taxes. We all get benefits from them, and 
we have since 1964 had a program in this country called Medicare which 
was a program in which everybody put their money and people over the 
age of 65 took out their money to pay for health care benefits when 
they needed them. Everybody got the same thing everywhere in the whole 
country.
  But there have been people in this Congress who have always thought 
that the idea of doing something collectively was somehow, I do not 
know, socialism or something bad. I do not know. They believe that 
everybody should be individually responsible for themselves, that they 
should be on their own and that they should deal with these things in a 
market, like they were buying cars or buying refrigerators or 
television sets.
  So we have a bill before us that is going to undo what we have had in 
this country for senior citizens for the last 38 years. They have been 
waiting. They have been trying to do this for 4 or 5 years.
  I was on the Medicare commission. One of the Members of the other 
body and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) of this body and I 
represented the Democrats on that commission, and we managed to hold 
off the disaster which is being foisted on the senior citizens and the 
country itself in the next week.
  This attitude about the common good really began to be undermined 
under Mr. Reagan. It was his campaign slogan in 1980: Are you better 
off than you were 4 years ago? Not are ``we'' better off than we were 4 
years ago, but are ``you.''
  This bill is going to say we are going to guarantee a premium support 
to every senior citizen in this country; we are going to write them a 
check, $5,900, $6,000, $6,300, whatever; and we are going to say now 
you, grandma, take that check out and find yourself an insurance 
company that will take care of what your needs are. You can stay in the 
program of Medicare as we know it, but since the healthy and the least 
sick will go out and find these good deals somewhere, who will be left 
in the regular program? The old and the sick.
  The price per person is going to go up, so they are going to raise 
the premium on anybody who stays in the regular program. Is that 
thinking about the common good, that we are going to pick on the ones 
who are the old and the sick, and we are going to let the young and the 
healthy seniors go off and make a good deal somewhere? No, it is not. 
It is wrong, it is un-American, and it is undermining the whole concept 
of Medicare.
  The idea that all seniors put their money into the pot, nobody sits 
around in this country and says, gee, I hope I get sick so I can use 
some money out of the pot. There is nobody that crazy in our country. 
Everybody wants insurance there when they are sick and particularly 
they want to feel independent, they have taken care of it themselves. 
It is not their children that have to do it or their grandchildren.
  My father died a couple of years ago at 93. My mother is 93, and we 
four kids in my family have not had to spend anything on our mother's 
health or our father's health. Like every American, we pay our taxes 
into the pot, and they have taken out when they needed to; and that has 
gone on over the entire country.
  What they are saying in this bill is send your mother out and let her 
pick her own plan. That is wrong; and as we watch this debate, 
understand that is what they are saying to every senior citizen. Here 
is your money; good luck, Grandma; I hope you find something for 
yourself.
  I hope every Member votes ``no'' on this. We could do better than 
this.

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