[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9295]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                MEDICARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. McDermott) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about Medicare, 
Medicare in a fact-based universe where truth matters.
  With Medicare, people's health is at stake and their financial life 
is at stake as well. Republicans and Democrats don't agree on much 
these days, but most people agree that the long-term deficits of this 
country are driven by ever-rising health care costs. If you solve the 
problem of skyrocketing health care costs, our deficit problem would 
largely go away. What to do is the problem.
  Democrats feel we have an unbreakable compact with seniors. Democrats 
think basic health needs of the elderly should be guaranteed and the 
elderly should never be driven into bankruptcy. Republicans think there 
is no compact with the elderly and that bankruptcy is just natural 
economics.
  So the Republicans have wanted to kill Medicare ever since it was 
passed in 1965. As recently as 1993, Speaker Gingrich said: We want it 
to wither on the vine. The craziest thing about the Republican plan to 
kill Medicare is that their plan does nothing to control costs. Despite 
all the Republican screaming about budgets and deficits, their plan 
does nothing to fix the single largest problem that threatens the whole 
of our economic situation in this country.

                              {time}  1030

  The Republican plan is to give seniors a coupon for about half their 
monthly premium and then walk away. If you can't pay the other half of 
the premium, too bad, no health care for you. If you can pay and it 
bankrupts you, too bad. Costs will continue to skyrocket.
  We Democrats think that the Ryan wrecking ball is the wrong way to 
go. Democrats are responsible stewards of the Medicare system. 
Democrats want to lower costs, improve care, and keep the elderly from 
going bankrupt.
  Now, it's important to keep the debate on Medicare reality based. The 
fact is that when we passed the health care law last year, the 
Republicans went around wildly screaming about death panels and scaring 
as many voters as possible. It was all politics, and it was not true.
  The fact is that the health care reform had 165 measures in it to 
improve Medicare. Medicare is about paying for doctors, nurses, 
hospitals, drugs. The health care law improved Medicare by helping 
doctors focus more on taking care of patients, by keeping nurses from 
drowning in paperwork, by making hospitals more efficient, and by 
getting fairer prices for drugs.
  The Democrats worked with hospitals to improve the payments and, so, 
saved the country $157 billion in the hospital payments. The Republican 
plan did nothing to save Americans money. It just shifted the cost from 
the government onto Grandma and her kids. The Democratic health care 
law saved $136 billion by reducing payments to insurance companies. The 
Republican plan gave a runaway train of money to insurance companies.
  The annual Medicare trustee report came out last month, and it said 
that the new health care law was a sizable improvement to Medicare. 
$500 billion of savings and better care for more people. Those are the 
facts. It's what any good company would do--increase quality and lower 
costs.
  The Democrats have a plan for Medicare, and we passed it in the 
Accountable Care Act last year. That's why the Republicans want to 
repeal it.
  You've got to understand what all this repeal talk is about. They 
want to get rid of the improvements that we made in health care. We cut 
money from one place that didn't make sense and improved care for 
prevention, for other places for seniors. We knew what we were doing.
  But the Republicans' goal has always been to end Medicare as we know 
it. They have been very clear from 1964 right straight through Newt 
Gingrich and through the Ryan plan. They don't want to have a Medicare 
that guarantees seniors' security. They want to give them a little 
coupon and say: Now go find an insurance company that will take care of 
you, Grandma.
  Think about that.
  What seniors really want is certainty. When you get old, what you 
worry about is: How am I going to take care of myself? And how am I 
going to help my kids and leave a little something to them? Am I going 
to have to go to my kids and say: I can't go to the doctor because I 
can't pay for it?
  That Medicare card is their security. The Republicans want to get rid 
of it. We have already passed a plan to save it.

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