Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to dispel the many myths that too many Democrats in this Chamber and Presidential candidate John Kerry have been spreading at the historic progress that this Republican Congress has made and that the President…
Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to dispel the many myths that too many Democrats in this Chamber and Presidential candidate John Kerry have been spreading at the historic progress that this Republican Congress has made and that the President signed making finally the promise that was made to seniors on prescription drugs come true.
The Mediscare that is taking place is shameful. They are trying to frighten seniors into believing that this is not a bill that will help them, help seniors; and that is a shame. When the elderly are watching TV and they see the nasty ads on moveon.org, which are very despicable ads, I think that the record needs to be set straight on exactly the benefits of the Medicare prescription drug improvement bill that was passed and finally signed into law.
I held some town hall meetings in my district, and we discussed the myths that were out there; and when I gave the seniors the facts, every one of them was very happy that this bill passed and is law and will benefit them. Let me give my colleagues an example.
Myth number one is that seniors will be forced into a Medicare prescription drug plan. That is so far from the truth. The Medicare prescription drug plan is entirely voluntary. No one will ever be required to join. If you do not need it or if you do not want prescription drug coverage, you certainly do not have to enroll, not now, not ever, never, if that is what you want.
In addition, you actually are prohibited from joining the prescription drug plan if you already receive coverage from another plan. Many seniors are fortunate because either they or their spouse retired from a company or government entity that offers prescription drug plans.
The second myth that I was very happy to dispel was if they had prescription drug coverage now from their previous employer or their spouse's previous employer that that coverage would automatically be dropped. The fact is that the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute actually predicts that virtually no employees will lose coverage because of the very lucrative tax-free incentive that employers associations and labor unions will receive through this new law.
It is very interesting that many of the congressional offices had calls that were placed when this bill was under consideration, and they were placed by many former union members who were frightened into believing that this bill would not benefit them. What the unions were not saying is that they would actually receive funding as an incentive to continue the prescription drug plan that they may have for retirees.
When you look at the number of employers and associations and labor unions offering health care benefits, the number actually has declined from 66 percent in 1988 to only 34 percent in 2002. That was because of the rising costs of health care and prescription drug coverage.
This bill allows employers to negotiate better discounts from manufacturers and also provides incentives for them to continue their prescription drug coverage. This is what employers have been waiting for, and that is, some government incentives to continue their prescription drug coverage. For every dollar that the employer or union spends between $250 and $5,000 for the individual's coverage, for every dollar that they spend there they will actually get a 28 cent subsidy, and that is a tax-free subsidy which if you do the math equals about a 40 percent tax-free amount. Never before has government ever offered this kind of an incentive to private enterprise to continue health care coverage.
The third myth which, again, seniors, because of the moveon.org ads and some mailings that went out in many districts where there is a high number of seniors, and that was the myth that the new law would provide them with inadequate health care prescription drug assistance. The truth of the matter is that when a full prescription drug benefit takes effect, seniors could see their senior prescription drug spending reduced 25 to 75 percent, and that would be in exchange for a small premium estimated to be somewhere around $35. If we had not passed the bill last year, most would continue to pay full retail value for prescription drugs and would not see any savings unless you were covered under a private plan.
The fourth myth was that it only provides coverage for drug costs up to $2,250. It does include a donut provision and individuals are being told that there was no coverage for catastrophic expenses. Once armed with the truth, the seniors were very convinced that this was a good bill because the Medicare prescription drug plan pays 95 percent of catastrophic costs of $3,600 or higher and the average senior spends somewhere around $1,450 a year on prescription drugs, and the prescription drug plan included in this bill will actually cover about 75 percent of the cost between $250 and the $2,250. This is $750 more than the average senior spends.
For those expenses between $2,250 and $3,600, which are the ``donut,'' there still is an estimated 25 percent discount that will be available and then the person will only have to pay 5 percent of the drug costs once they reach that $3,600 amount. In other words, the government will be paying 95 percent of the pharmaceutical costs above $3,600.
Unfortunately, one of the other scares that were perpetrated on seniors was that it privatizes Medicare. This bill modernizes Medicare to provide better health care within the existing Medicare program. Medicare will continue to be administered, controlled, and regulated and, lest we not forget, paid for by the Federal Government. Medicare already provides health care from private doctors, hospitals, and even allows participation in private integrated managed health care plans.
This bill, which was signed into law, actually gives seniors more of a choice in doctors while providing the benefits that absolutely needed to be guaranteed.
The sixth myth was that there were no price controls in the Medicare prescription drug bill and that the cost of prescription drugs was not addressed. Again, another untruth that was told because some people are just angry because we finally did pass a Medicare prescription drug bill, and that issue will now be this side of the aisle's to brag about and to tell people about back in their district.
The bill does include reforms that will accelerate cheaper generic drugs to the market and it also removes the artificial ``S Price'' requirement. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that with these changes consumers will achieve billions of dollars in savings.
One of the other savings that we actually will achieve from this bill is that we will be keeping seniors out of hospitals. Let me give a very brief example:
I know of a woman in my district, her name is Fran, and she was on a multitude of medicine. She was 85 years old. Fran was actually cutting the medicine in half because she could not afford the cost of the prescription drugs. With this kind of coverage, she clearly will be not hospitalized as often and she will have the medication that she needs.
In the meantime, she is taking advantage of some of the cards that are out there. She will be very happy when the card comes out in May of this year, the discount card, and also she prevailed upon her family to help her. This prescription drug plan that was finally signed into law, Mr. Speaker, means that she will not feel as if she has to be dependent upon her family.
Another myth is that it does nothing to help Florida with our drug and health care costs. As you know, Florida is a great haven for seniors because of the wonderful weather and low taxes. This bill actually provides billions of dollars to the State for seniors and for those duly eligible Medicare and Medicaid retirees. This proposal provides 650,000 lower-income seniors in Florida, who are not eligible for Medicaid, $10 billion worth of prescription drug benefits. It also provides an additional 490,000 Floridians who are duly eligible for Medicare and Medicaid with over $6.7 billion annually in prescription drug coverage with no gap in that coverage.
Currently, there are a large number of seniors in Florida who are reimporting drugs from Canada, and there was a fear out there that they would no longer be able to continue to import pharmaceutical products from Canada. When I informed them that the truth of the matter is that H.R. 1 requires both HHS and the Federal Trade Commission to study the safety and trade issues surrounding drug reimportation so that their safety would be of paramount concern, and that we are going to resolve the safety issue in an expeditious manner, they felt a great deal of comfort in that.
One of the last myths that happily we dispelled was that it does not address preventive care. The fact is that under H.R. 1, all new enrollees will be eligible for a Welcome to Medicare physical. In addition, all Medicare beneficiaries will receive cholesterol screening and be part of a disease management program.
Senator Kerry and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle should be ashamed. When this monumental bill came before Congress, Senator Kerry did not even take the time to cast his vote or to speak before his colleagues. Yet now he stands in criticism. Moreover, time and time again he voted to cripple America's health care system by opposing curtailments on frivolous lawsuits that drive up the cost of health care for all Americans.
Seniors deserve peace of mind when making health care decisions. For the first time in history, we are protecting seniors by preserving their Medicare benefits while providing them with more choices. And, again, I want to stress, this is a voluntary program.
Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have some of my colleagues here this evening, and I want to yield to the gentleman from North Carolina to give him an opportunity to express his views because I know he was very supportive of this bill.
Mr. Speaker, I am certain the number of retirees in North Carolina are increasing all of the time, and I think it is important to remember that because women actually outlive men by about 5.4 years that so many times women are left living at the poverty level or just slightly above it.
This certainly will help so many women because, for example, a woman who is a widow, or without her husband's insurance, will now have a prescription benefit available to them that will save approximately 60 percent of all drug costs if they choose to enroll. It is going to be a godsend for so many women, certainly for the retirees in North Carolina, and I know in Florida.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus).
Mr. Speaker, HMOs have used the PBMs, the pharmacy benefit management, concept for so long because they realize that they are excellent at negotiating the prices of prescription drugs. Several of the HMOs in Florida have done that and have had significant savings that they then could pass on to the seniors who are actually in the Medicare+Choice plan. When you have somebody who knows how to drive those prices down, why reinvent the wheel.
Mr. Speaker, one of the other things that we need to point out is that there is a scheduled copay that was supposed to take effect for home health care. That is postponed in the bill, and it is eliminated in the bill.
Additionally, there was a $1,500 therapy cap. I recently broke a bone in my arm, and $1,500 might be okay for a broken bone, but somebody who has a stroke, $1,500 worth of therapy would not even touch their needs. So we eliminated the $1,500 therapy cap, which I know there are many seniors out there that are very grateful for that. That is one of the small parts of this bill which means so much to so many seniors.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Rogers).
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess). It is good to have two doctors, one on each side of me here.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the good gentleman from Texas for being here. He is absolutely right, you cannot have it both ways. Mr. Kerry cannot vote against meaningful tort reform, and then all of a sudden be worried about the high cost of healthcare, when we all know what a very high percentage of it is. Certainly I have known percentages, anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of the cost of healthcare today is because we have become such a litigious society.
I am very happy to yield to the gentleman from my neighbor State of Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), also a freshman Member.
Mr. Speaker, it certainly is much needed and certainly long overdue, and I think any senior who has been out there waiting will tell us that.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Chocola).
Mr. Speaker, I have been very fortunate to have been named the chair of the Women's Caucus; and so much of this bill tonight, for my remaining time, I would like to emphasize the importance of the bill to women who are retired.
Mr. Speaker, in Florida alone, there are 167,000 elderly women who live below the poverty level. There are about 750,000 elderly women who are between the poverty level and the 150 percent of the poverty level who will be helped greatly by this bill. When we combine these statistics with the fact that the average woman in Medicare earns about half of the income from Social Security as a man, women are facing a very serious problem: How do they afford their prescription drug coverage?
Congress obviously responded to these problems and created the new voluntary prescription drug bill. Again, I am emphasizing, it is a voluntary prescription drug bill.
Unfortunately, women over the age of 65 suffer more from chronic illnesses than men. Over 14 percent of women suffer from arthritis, and 17 percent more suffer from osteoporosis. Five percent suffer from hypertension. Even more women have cardiac problems that will go undetected. The new benefit that is included in this bill, Mr. Speaker, the Welcome to Medicare physical for the baby boomers who are just coming into the Medicare arena, will be there to help detect many of these problems, including heart problems that very often historically have been misdiagnosed.
Mr. Speaker, I know that the hour is late and I am running out of time, but I did want to say that for the 2.1 million women in my State with no husband present, an astounding 30 percent of those women live below the poverty line. Republicans in Congress passed the bill that will benefit retired women and men; and for that, as more information comes out about the bill, as the truth comes out about the bill, I know that seniors around the Nation from the many States that were represented here tonight will be very grateful and are very grateful that we had the courage to finally pass a Medicare prescription drug bill for seniors.