Medicare Under Attack

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is our pleasure during the next 40-or-so minutes to express concerns about a Medicare program that has served this Nation's seniors so very well for 45 years and is at risk of being ended.

Tonight, we witnessed on this floor the third such vote to end Medicare by the Republican majority. We know that our seniors would be forced to shop in a private market. The certainty of a guaranteed program that has been available to our Nation's seniors since 1966 is at risk. The money that the government would kick in for coverage would not keep pace with the costs for those health care policies, and so our seniors would be forced to dig into their pockets, reach into those pockets and perhaps have their costs, their contributions, more than doubled. This is an unnecessary step that is being taken against our Nation's seniors that is irresponsible.

We believe that what we have seen since that threshold in time in 1965 when we approved such a measure, the impact from the private sector health care industry has witnessed a growth of over 5,000 percent in the cost of premiums in that time since 1965. The impact on seniors has been certainly far less than that. We have seen the containing of administrative costs, we avoid marketing requirements with the Medicare program, and we have been able to share benefits with our Nation's seniors in a way that protected their health care coverage, that enabled them to enjoy a quality of life.

It can easily be documented that when our Nation's seniors retired back in the sixties, they would see their economic durability challenged. Their strength, their economic opportunity to grow forward into retirement was oftentimes impacted by the cost of medical needs. There was cherry-picking going on, there were opportunities that were denied our Nation's seniors, and they were asked to absorb an inordinate amount of pressure in order to continue forward in soundness, in wellness and certainly to have the coverage that was required to meet their health care needs.

All of this now is at risk with several proposals. We've seen a Ryan plan, a budget that Republicans produced. The Ryan Road to Ruin, as we've designated it, would cause severe hardship on our Nation's seniors. We saw the Republican Study Committee come up with a vote that again ended Medicare. And today, when we witnessed this attempt to play with the United States Constitution, to make it very easy to end Medicare while making it even more difficult to address those deep pockets that get favorable treatment by some go continuing on because it would be more difficult to end that opportunity.

So what we have here tonight is an opportunity to discuss the assault on America's working families, the assault on her seniors, the Nation's seniors, by ending Medicare, ending Medicare that puts the private sector insurance industry in control. They put them in the driver's seat, they require our seniors to shop with a voucher that won't nearly cover the cost of those premiums, and, again, require them to pay double as we go forward.

We are joined by Representative Garamendi from California here this evening and Representative Joe Courtney from Connecticut. The three of us will share thoughts about how to better address the economic pressures on this Nation today without ending Medicare. It has been a lifesaver for so many of our Nation's seniors and has provided a sense of security, of predictability in their budgeting as they go forward in retirement years.

Representative John Garamendi from California, thank you for joining us this evening. You witnessed it here tonight, as Mr. Courtney and I both did, Representative Courtney from Connecticut and I, witnessed yet another vote that would mean the end for Medicare, because it's an attempt to play with the Constitution, mess with our Constitution in a way that would really focus on hardship for our Nation's seniors.

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Mr. TONKO. I think it's important for us to share with the American public what's happening on this floor in the House of Representatives. So many suggest that the history that drove Medicare to be developed, the dynamics that were so impacting on the senior community across this country coast-to-coast, could be revisited if their proposal to end Medicare--the Republican proposal to end Medicare--were to take hold. And I know Representative Courtney, Joe Courtney from Connecticut, understands that. He has shared those concerns over and over again, that we could go back and revisit history of 45 years ago, 46 years ago, when people literally were impacted by cherry-picking going on, where they couldn't afford policies even if they were offered to them, and many times they couldn't get policies written to cover them.

Representative Courtney, thank you for joining us this evening on what is an important bit of information exchange for America. They need to know that the seniors are at risk.

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Mr. TONKO. Very well said, Representative Courtney.

What I think upsets all three of us is the fact that, with the Affordable Care Act, where we found savings by reining in some of the profit margins of insurance companies that were used--those savings were used to fill the doughnut hole that you just talked about--they're now taking those savings and sharing them in a way that's not going to benefit seniors, and they're not going to fill that doughnut hole. So when seniors come to us and say, Look, what is this talk about Medicare? they're saying, You destroyed Medicare. No. We were working to make it stronger. We're working to fill the doughnut hole so that prescription costs that are impacting seniors--my gosh, with the passage of time, we have seen advancements in pharmaceutical research that provides more opportunity for wellness or for cure. That has stretched opportunities galore for our seniors. But they would raid those savings and pull them away again from our senior community and use those in other ways, which we find very offensive.

This ending of Medicare with this third vote tonight, how much more do we need to challenge the security of seniors out there? They're disturbed every time they hear of this effort to end Medicare. We want to make it stronger. We're talking about all sorts of efforts to bulk purchase pharmaceuticals for the Medicare program, which would make it stronger. They forecast $156 billion or $157 billion of savings to the Federal Government that would provide correspondingly some $27 billion in savings for individual seniors just by doing that.

So there's an all-out effort here to strengthen Medicare, not to end it. And it's sad that tonight we

witnessed the third vote cast here, with the majority's support so that it passed in the House, to move forward and include in that packaging the ending of Medicare.

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Mr. TONKO. Representative Garamendi, earlier you had talked about the impact on the 55-year-old or 54-year-old. If you look at a 54-year-old today, that individual is advised to save some $182,000 to $190,000 so as to have that available cash to cover the deficiency that's going to come with this end to Medicare, where you shop with this voucher, and it's only going to cover 32 cents on the dollar. So that 54-year-old is already impacted, but there is more to the picture than that.

When you draw the line in the sand and say, ``look, we end Medicare, and so those under 55 today will have to fend for themselves,'' they'll shop out in the private sector market, but when you don't have the newly entering senior community as they turn 65 enter into the mix, there is a correlation of age with the drawdown of the health care system. As you take the younger senior population, they provide for that ebb and flow within the pooling that Representative Courtney talked about earlier. The beauty of the program is that you pool seniors from the very youngest of seniors to ``senior'' seniors, and as that need for health care grows with age, the newly entering help provide that balance. So the stability of the program and the durability of that program is at risk, I believe, because we're changing the dynamics.

Representative Courtney, you have talked about the security of that program, of the stability that we can provide, and how we in this House, as Democrats, have been working to strengthen the Medicare program: to build the trust fund so that there is this underpinning of support that will enable the program to continue to meet the needs of the upcoming population of baby boomers.

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Mr. TONKO. I believe it's $157 billion, right. It's a benefit that ought to be shared on behalf of our Nation's seniors.

To the points made earlier in this discussion as to the efforts for prevention, for screenings, that do not require co-payments or deductibles--the annual checkups--these are all elements that were introduced and imbedded into our reform package to contain costs, to bend that cost curve.

The real concern that so many have raised from the Democratic membership in this House is that we're not providing the sorts of savings for our seniors, that we're not bending that cost curve. When you send them out to shop and don't even give them adequate coverage--32 cents--and then the indexing into the future is not keeping pace with the projected inflation of health care costs, we're putting them at risk. We're targeting them for defeat. They're saying, Well, you're going to have 13 or 15 plans from which to choose as you shop in the open market.--That isn't bending the cost curve.

So the economic consequences here are, first and foremost, the hardship that seniors will have to embrace, that they'll have to endure. Then also, when we look back at 1966 and 1965, the available cash--the economic vitality of a senior household--was drained. It went south because medical costs were usurping their retirement funds.

Think of it. Those dollars not only help provide stability and security for our Nation's seniors, but that's available cash that they can use to perhaps have a meal out at a restaurant in their local community. There are dollars that are made available that get spun into the regional economy that allow for the comeback. So this is very interesting.

The programs, the cuts that they're suggesting, are all in areas that can help create jobs and improve economic viability

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Mr. TONKO. Representative Courtney, I think what we're talking about here is legitimate reform in a way that bends that cost curve and takes a sound economic program like Medicare for our Nation's seniors and allows for that benefit and pulls the resources from coast to coast to serve our Nation's seniors well.

The concern here is, Representative Garamendi, they want to give their friends with deep pockets more opportunity for business. End Medicare to provide more business for the private sector insurance industry. Privatize Social Security, right?

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Mr. TONKO. It's very obvious from the polls being taken by many, many organizations out there that the American public said it's about jobs. We need jobs in the economy in order to make things work. It will reduce the deficit. It will put people to work. It will start growing the economic engine of neighborhoods and States and the entire country.

But what we're seeing is that there's this Republican assault on the middle class. They're cutting programs that serve the middle class. They're cutting programs that create jobs and invest in a new economy. But they're leaving alone these groups that are actually not--they're earning record profits, and we're still giving them hard-earned taxpayer dollars in the form of handouts and subsidies to the oil industry, to various industries that are just befriended by those in the House that want to play off the middle class and end Medicare, which is a very dangerous precedent that will be set.

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Mr. TONKO. At least nine of every 10 comments we get either through the mail or on the phone are: Save Medicare. Don't let them mess with it.

We're fighting the good fight here. America needs to know there is a risk of losing Medicare. There are those who want to end it. We saw another vote here tonight.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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