[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Page 19054]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

  Mr. REID. Finally, my first elected job, many years ago, was to an 
organization called the Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital. It was the 
largest hospital in the State. It was the largest hospital district. 
People ran at-large from Clark County, the Las Vegas area, and I was 
elected to that. It was my first elected job. When I took that job, 
there was no Medicare. In that hospital, when someone came who was old 
and did not have money, someone had to sign for them--a husband, a 
wife, father, mother, brother, sister, neighbor; someone signed. If 
that person did not pay after agreeing to pay, we had a large 
collection agency and we would go after those people. It was very 
difficult sometimes to collect that money, difficult in the sense it 
was hard to do, but, more importantly, it was difficult to do because 
you hated to go after people to pay these large hospital and doctor 
bills.
  Medicare came into being before I left my job. It changed. Prior to 
Medicare, 40 percent of the seniors who came into that hospital had no 
insurance, and that is where they had to look to their friends and 
neighbors and relatives to take care of that bill. Today, after 
Medicare is the law of the land, virtually every senior citizen has the 
ability to go into a hospital anyplace in America.
  For all of these many years, going on five decades, Medicare has been 
improving and extending the lives of seniors. The Affordable Care Act, 
legislation that my Republican colleagues tend to denigrate, 
Obamacare--let's talk a little bit about Obamacare today, the 
Affordable Care Act.
  One thing that bill did is it extended the life of Medicare for 12 
years. Medicare would stay strong for future generations and for 
retirees. That is one reason we passed that legislation.
  Health care reform today is helping seniors by beginning to close the 
doughnut hole, the infamous doughnut hole for prescription drugs for 
seniors. This year; that is, 2011, because of the legislation we 
passed, Obamacare, more than 2.5 million Medicare recipients, including 
thousands of Nevadans, saved about $600 each on prescription drugs. 
That amounts to about $1.6 billion, thanks to this legislation. For 
some seniors on fixed incomes, those savings prevented difficult 
choices between literally food and medicine.
  We also had a provision in that legislation that people could get 
wellness checks, screenings, and a checkup. More than 24 million 
seniors this year got free physicals because of health care reform. 
That is progress of which America can be proud.

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