Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003-Conference Report-Continued
Nov. 22, 2003
MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG, IMPROVEMENT, AND MODERNIZATION ACT OF 2003-CONFERENCE REPORT-CONTINUED
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I want to speak a lot longer to respond to what the Senator from Illinois has said because there is so much that can be so successfully rebutted. I will speak to two or three very obvious statements that are wrong.
The first one is that the Senator from Illinois has never run into a senior who endorsed HMOs. Forty percent of the seniors in Miami are voluntarily in Medicare+Choice. That is an HMO. And 6 percent of the seniors in his own large city of Chicago are members of HMOs. They are there because they want to be there. They can get in or, if they leave the area in which they live to go someplace elsewhere and they don't have HMOs, they are going to have fee for service. These seniors are there because they want to be there.
That brings me to the point that a major portion of this legislation is the right of seniors to choose. Seniors who want prescription drugs can have them or they don't have to buy into it if they don't want to. If they want to keep fee-for-service Medicare just as it is, they can stay there. They do not have to go into any of the new programs that we provide in this bill. They have the right to choose.
I believe members of the other party don't believe that seniors ought to have the right to choose because their response to Government health programs for seniors or others is more Government, more Government, more Government.
Another obvious point that was made that ought to be rebutted is the question about the AARP becoming so political. Why does the AARP support this legislation? "Seniors are the losers." The AARP speaks for 40 million members. Why is it that this year when we are dealing with bipartisan legislation and the AARP backs it that they are political, but last year when they backed the Democrats in their efforts to have a partisan bill, the AARP, at that point, was not partisan?
I yield the floor.