[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 19]
[House]
[Page 25701]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                MEDICARE

  (Mr. NEUGEBAUER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Speaker, this year is the 40th anniversary of 
Medicare. Medicare has come a long way. Initially, it started off as a 
hospitalization policy. Later we added physician benefits and physician 
visits and even some tests. Now we have put the third leg of that stool 
on; and we are going, effective January 1, to add prescription drugs to 
Medicare, making Medicare now a full health care policy for our 
seniors.
  The reason that Congress did this was because many times the 
physicians would prescribe prescriptions for our seniors, yet they 
would have to make a decision between buying food or the prescription. 
Congress did not think that was a good idea; and so effective January 
1, seniors will have a prescription drug option. The sign-up begins 
next Tuesday, November 15. We encourage seniors to begin to go 
shopping.
  I held a town hall meeting in Abilene, Texas, on Monday at the Rose 
Park Senior Center and encouraged our seniors to go shopping. One of 
the things that was so important about this new process was that we 
allowed seniors the ability to make their own choices and brought 
competition in it.
  I urge our seniors to look very closely at this new great 
prescription drug benefit that has been provided for them.

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