Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRAPO. That is absolutely the case. I would like to point out, when we had the Finance Committee markup, I asked CBO Director Elmendorf directly whether provisions in the bill, which are still in the bill, would reduce the benefits that Medicare recipients received. His response was:

For those who would be enrolled otherwise under current law, yes.

There has been a lot of talk here about we are not cutting Medicare benefits or we are or it is this or that. The bottom line is, the CBO Director said it: Yes, we are cutting benefits.

I would like to ask the sponsor of this motion a question because I know there are some who are saying the reason we are cutting Medicare Advantage is that it is so expensive, and we should be cutting Medicare and controlling its costs; that it is about 14 percent more expensive than fee-for-service Medicare.

Some people say if you are defending Medicare Advantage, you are defending overpayments in health care plans. Would the Senator from Utah like to respond to that criticism some are making?

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Mr. CRAPO. The Senator is absolutely right. A lot of people trying to defend these cuts are saying these extra costs in the Medicare Advantage Programs are just going to make insurance companies' profits bigger and help pay for large CEO salaries. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is, as the Senator from Utah already indicated, 75 percent of this 14 percent extra payment in these plans go to provide the seniors with the extra benefits we are talking about, and then 25 percent is returned to the Federal Government, not to insurance companies, not to CEOs.

I have a chart. We are going to make it into a bigger one. But those who support this program say we are not cutting Medicare benefits. This chart--I apologize it is a little bit small--but this is a chart of the United States. It shows what is happening to the benefits of Medicare Advantage beneficiaries. As you might guess, the dark red is more than 50 percent reduction in the benefits of the people in those dark red States. In the medium red color, it is between a 25- and 50-percent reduction in coverage. The only States that do not have a reduction in coverage are the white ones. There are three or four States that are not seeing deep cuts in Medicare Advantage benefits.

Those who say--like the President who said it was one of his goals--if you like what you have, you can keep it--not if you live in one of the States that is not in white on this chart because your benefits will be cut.

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Mr. CRAPO. Yes, I would. This chart shows the last two sentences of our colloquy when we were in the Finance Committee, but it went on for some time. But the bottom line is that I was asking the Director of CBO whether the cuts to Medicare Advantage that are in the bill would reduce benefits to senior citizens, and he said yes. And the reason he used this phrase here, which says ``for those who would be enrolled otherwise under current law,'' the reason he prefaced it that way--which we don't have on the chart--is that for future seniors it will not be a viable option. So in the future, those who are not on it now won't have a significant viable option to get on it because it is going to be gutted.

So he was saying that for those 75 percent--and by the way, Medicare Advantage is the most popular part of Medicare today. It is the fastest growing part of Medicare. It is popular because it provides these additional benefits that seniors have to pay so significantly for to get in supplemental insurance that AARP is going to provide. So what the CBO Director said was that for the future, those who aren't already on it won't get it.

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Mr. CRAPO. I wish to make a comment or two and then engage with the ranking member of the Budget Committee.

Often people talk about driving the cost curve down. Frankly, when you talk to Americans about what they want in health care reform, the vast majority of them say the reason we need health care reform is because of the skyrocketing cost of health care and health care insurance. Those who are promoting this bill say they are bending that cost curve down. My question is which cost curve are they talking about? Is it the size of government? Are they bending the size of government growth down? No, as the Senator from New Hampshire said, they are growing government by $2.5 trillion for the first true 10-year period of the bill.

Are they driving personal health care costs down? No, the CBO report we recently got said 30 percent of Americans will see their health insurance go up, and the other 70 percent will, at best, see it stay about what it is today, rising at the same levels it is today.

Are they talking about the Federal deficit? The chairman of the Budget Committee has indicated to us we are going to see skyrocketing deficits. Those who claim this bill is going to reduce the deficit can say so only if they take into account all of their budget gimmicks, such as not counting the first 4 years of the spending, or the hundreds of billions of dollar of taxes that are going to be imposed on the American people, or the Medicare cuts we have been talking about. Take any one of those three out of this bill and it drives the deficit up in a skyrocketing fashion, is that not correct, Senator?

Mr. GREGG. Absolutely.

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