[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 18785]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 THE BUSH MEDICARE BILL'S DIRTY LAUNDRY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 20, 2004, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, America's newspapers are widely read, 
except on Saturdays. So it is not much of a surprise that the Bush 
administration waited until late on a Friday afternoon leading into 
Labor Day weekend to announce that they were raising Medicare premiums 
by a record 17.4 percent. That is the sort of news, however, you just 
cannot suppress, so the news that Saturday was all about the Bush 
administration's plans to impose the biggest premium increase in 
Medicare's 38-year history. But the White House public relations office 
is nothing, if not tenacious. So faced with the bad news and faced with 
the blame for that increase that would naturally affix to the Bush 
administration, they did what they always do, they tried to shift the 
blame. Even though the Republicans have controlled the House and the 
Senate and the White House for the last 3\1/2\ years, it is actually 
the Democrats, they said, who are responsible for the premium increase. 
But no one bought it then and no one buys it now. The facts are the 
facts and no amount of spin, no amount of revisionist history, can 
change the facts.
  Before the Bush Medicare bill became law, the nonpartisan Medicare 
trustees estimated the monthly Medicare premium increase for 2005 would 
be $2. After the Bush Medicare bill became law, the premium increase 
instead jumped $11.60. That is the 17.4 percent record increase. The 
facts are that the premium increase after the Bush Medicare law, which 
was written by the drug and insurance companies, is five times larger 
than the premium increase estimated before Congress passed the Medicare 
law.
  So where is all that money going? Where are the billions of dollars 
out of seniors' pockets, that huge increase, where are those dollars 
going? The Bush administration is quick to remind us that some of it 
goes to new preventive health care benefits. That is true. But what 
they are less eager to say is that a whole lot of it is going directly 
from seniors' pockets into the pockets of the biggest HMO insurance 
companies in the country.
  The Bush Medicare law creates a $23.5 billion slush fund that HMOs 
can use to lure seniors out of Medicare and out of Medicare's reliable, 
equitable core program into the HMO private insurance. This windfall is 
in addition, this insurance company payoff, to the payments HMOs 
receive in exchange for covering enrollees. It is a bonus largely paid 
for because of major political contributions the insurance and the drug 
industries have made to the Bush administration. Seniors who already 
spend more than 20 percent of their incomes on out-of-pocket health 
care costs are receiving a giant increase in their Medicare premiums, 
and HMOs are receiving a giant boost to their bottom line. HMO profits 
already, before the Bush administration did this, jumped 50 percent 
last year. They hardly need more money from America's overstretched 
seniors.
  Social Security benefits for seniors will increase by 2 percent next 
year. So the Social Security increase and the checks that seniors get 
will go up 2 percent. The Medicare premiums will go up 17 percent. I 
will say it again. The Bush administration is draining billions from 
the Medicare trust fund into the pockets of the big insurance 
companies. At the same time, the Bush administration is emptying the 
pockets of America's seniors, again to the tune of billions of dollars.
  It is no secret that President Bush and his privatization of Medicare 
plans wants to take the responsibility for retiree health care away 
from Medicare and give it to HMOs. But to actually make seniors pay 
more so the President can pave over their Medicare program, every 
senior should be enraged, every American taxpayer should be outraged 
and none of us should put up with it.
  The bottom line is the Medicare legislation which the President 
pushed through this Congress and signed was written by the drug 
industry and the insurance industry. Medicare premiums went up 17 
percent announced by the administration earlier this month and the drug 
companies and the insurance companies have given President Bush and the 
Republican leadership tens of millions of dollars in political 
contributions this year. In the end, it is really as simple as that.

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