GOP Doctors Caucus: Medicare Seniors and Obamacare

Floor Speech

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Mr. DesJARLAIS. Thank you, Dr. Fleming. And I, like Dr. Roe, appreciate you holding this tonight because I think there's so much fear, frustration, and confusion among our Nation's seniors right now about what's really going on. There's a lot of misinformation out there. And I think it's good that we, as health care providers, can get together and help clear up some of the misinformation because, as Dr. Roe said, we should never let the government or bureaucrats get between the doctor and the patient. That's a very important relationship, and I think most all patients would agree.

How did we get into this mess?

It's really kind of mind boggling that it has come this far. And as you stated earlier, the Democrat plan is doing nothing; and we know that the consequences of that as, per the CBO, the actuary of CMS, Mr. Foster, has said Medicare will be bankrupt by 2020. So we cannot afford to do nothing. And we got into this mess really just by kind of the head-in-the-sand approach that sometimes occurs here in Washington.

As Dr. Roe mentioned, Medicare was initiated in 1965, and at that time the life expectancy for a male was 68. Well, thankfully, through good medicine, good follow-up, good care, better drugs, better techniques, the life expectancy has gone up at least by a dozen years. But that being said, there really wasn't any planning for that increase. A program that was designed for, on average, 3 years of coverage is now 12 years more, and so that's part of the problem.

A second big factor is we all knew about the baby boomers. Everyone knows about them. And the bottom line is they have started hitting the system at an alarming rate. Ten thousand new members every day are entering the Medicare system. Again, something that we've all seen coming, but it wasn't accounted for in terms of cost; and Dr. Roe explained how it was underestimated greatly what it would cost in the first place.

We know that people pay into Medicare because that is going to be their health care plan when they retire. That's what was promised to them. So we can't do nothing.

In the Paul Ryan plan, we laid out that those 55 and older won't have to worry about it. We know that we can't do nothing, so those 55 and under will have to make changes, as you discussed, and I'm sure we'll discuss more.

But for those seniors out there that are concerned that the Republican plan is cutting them off or killing Medicare as we know it simply isn't true. We're trying to preserve, protect, and save it for future generations as well as take care of them.

Right now you can take an average couple who makes $80,000 a year and they pay, over a lifetime, about $109,000 in Medicare taxes into the program. But with health care costs the way they are now, the average extraction for that same couple is $343,000.

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Mr. DesJARLAIS. Right.

As you say, it's clear that $1 in for $3 out doesn't add up by anybody's math, even Washington's math. So those factors make it very clear that Medicare is on an unsustainable path.

I find it very frustrating that so many people are living in fear right now with this misinformation. And if any of the other Members--I'm sure they experienced, as my office did, the AARP here, a few weeks ago, had seniors calling Congressmen to say, you know, Don't cut our Medicare. They're referring to the SGR cuts, which actually pertains to the doc fix. But the seniors are confused thinking that their Medicare was actually going to be cut 30 percent or 29, 27 percent, whatever it is. And so when they were calling my office, I was glad to tell them, Yes, we get it. That actually is a cut to physician reimbursement.

But what it does to seniors, more concerning, is that it's going to limit their access to care, because physicians right now are in a position where they can't afford the overhead to even keep their practices open.

I think it was good that the AARP brought that to their attention, but it certainly is great that we have the opportunity tonight to clear that up for our seniors, that it's not a cut, a direct cut to their Medicare benefits, but it is going to directly impact their access to care.

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