Health Insurance Needs To Be Affordable

Floor Speech

Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk of health care. Last week I had the opportunity to speak and listen at a town hall meeting in Bella Vista, Arkansas. This retirement community voiced their concern that insurance needed to be much more affordable and that we should do away with preexisting conditions. They did not want this paid for, though, on the backs of seniors.

In the current proposal, $500 billion is taken away from Medicare. They do this by decreasing or eliminating the subsidy on Advantage plans, so most seniors would lose this opportunity to help them. There would be less money to providers when, in the situation we have now, it's very difficult to even find a Medicare provider in some cases.

Again, it makes no sense, Mr. Speaker, to cut Medicare $500 billion, increase the patient load by 30 percent, not provide any more doctors to take care of the people, and no more facilities. We need reform, but we need commonsense reform. We must not do something just for the sake of doing it.

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