[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15499]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     PRESCRIPTION DRUG IMPORTATION

  (Mr. EMANUEL asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, today's New York Times reports that almost 
4 million senior citizens will lose their employer drug coverage and 
prescription drug coverage when the new Medicare law goes into effect 
in 2006. In most cases, this will result in beneficiaries getting worse 
drug coverage than they had before this bill was passed. My Republican 
colleagues sure have a funny way of implementing reform over there.
  In addition to not only 4 million more seniors getting worse coverage 
than originally planned, this bill will cost the taxpayers $150 billion 
more than Republicans originally said. If we had taken the steps to 
deal with prices originally in the Medicare bill, more employers would 
be able to afford the drug coverage they originally planned and senior 
citizens and taxpayers would save money.
  Yesterday, the House affirmed for the third time this session a 
bipartisan support for prescription drug reimportation. We have 
employers dropping their drug coverage because they can no longer 
afford rising drug prices. We have a Medicare card that now gives 
seniors higher prices and a lot more confusion than buying drugs from 
Canada and Europe, and we have a Medicare bill not designed for seniors 
in mind.
  Instead of a philosophy of the customer is always right, this bill 
says that special interests are always right.

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