[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5517-5518]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        MEDICARE CREDIBILITY GAP

  (Mr. BROWN of Ohio asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I hear my friends on the other side 
of the aisle talk about the Medicare bill. This was a bill that the 
President told us cost $400 billion. Yet people in the department who 
were not allowed to tell Congress had told the White House it would 
cost $550 billion. That is the first part of the credibility gap.
  The second part of the credibility gap is that the President said 
this was a bill to help America's seniors, when in fact this bill will 
mean $139 billion more in drug company profits, $46 billion in direct 
subsidies from taxpayers, from all of us, directly to the insurance 
industry.
  This bill was written in the Oval Office, this Medicare law, by the 
drug industry and by the insurance industry while the President and the 
Vice President stood by and tried to pretend that it was for American 
seniors. That is

[[Page 5518]]

the credibility gap this President and this Vice President have.
  We should have passed a prescription drug benefit for Medicare 
beneficiaries, not for the drug companies, not for the insurance 
companies.

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