Madam President, I know others are waiting, so I will make some brief remarks about something that is very important to me. I rise today to discuss S. 2087, the Medicare Protection Act. Over the past…
Madam President, I know others are waiting, so I will make some brief remarks about something that is very important to me.
I rise today to discuss S. 2087, the Medicare Protection Act.
Over the past few years one of the things we have witnessed in the Senate is, unfortunately, an irresponsible few who are trying to turn Medicare into a voucher system and raise the eligibility age for benefits. This would not only have a catastrophic effect on seniors' health but also on their financial security. It would force seniors to pay more for their doctor visits and for prescription drugs.
People in my State have figured this out. In fact, I recently got a little note from Philip of Jonesboro who said: ``Raising the Medicare eligibility age would shift thousands of dollars in costs to seniors and drive up premium costs.''
He got it exactly right. That is what it will do. That is what pretty much every study I have seen, at least, says it will do.
In Arkansas alone, we have well over 500,000 seniors who depend on Medicare. I encourage all of my colleagues to look at the numbers in their States. My guess is everyone has a large number of seniors in their State and the seniors understand how vitally important it is that we protect Medicare.
Turning Medicare into a voucher system or fundamentally changing it in any way by using some sort of voucher--they call it premium supplement, I don't know; they have a different word for it sometimes-- or raising the eligibility age or cutting benefits would be very detrimental to the people in my State, and I am sure in all 50 States.
As Rebecca from Fayetteville said:
Raising the Medicare age would simply force seniors such as
my mother and me to pay more out-of-pocket. We need
responsible, common-sense solutions to keep Medicare strong .
. .
I agree with that. That is exactly what we need. We need these responsible commonsense solutions. Hopefully they are going to be bipartisan solutions. That is how we get things done in Washington, by working in a bipartisan way. I am hoping, over time, this Medicare Protection Act will become a great bipartisan vehicle for us to protect Medicare.
It does two things, in a nutshell. First, it amends the Congressional Budget Act to define any provision in reconciliation legislation that makes changes to Medicare to reduce or eliminate guaranteed benefits or restrict eligibility criteria as extraneous and an improper use of the reconciliation process.
I know that is technical and that is kind of getting down in the weeds, but that is a very smart way to do it, to use the Congressional Budget Act to protect Medicare.
Secondly, it expresses the sense of the Senate that the Medicare eligibility age should not increase and that the Medicare Program should not be privatized or turned into a voucher system.
Again, if we look back over the years, there have been attempts to do this, most of them originating in the House of Representatives, but we have had a few of those attempts here.
As Hubert Humphrey once said: ``The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.''
The Medicare Protection Act is the right thing to do. I hope my colleagues from both sides of the aisle will look at this legislation, give it serious consideration, and join me in supporting this critical piece of legislation. It is a great way to protect our Medicare system.
With that, I yield the floor.
