Madam Speaker, it is easy to understand why President Bush and the Republicans have had such a hard time selling the Medicare law to the American people. Their Medicare law has more than its fair share of dirty laundry, as we can see from…
Madam Speaker, it is easy to understand why President Bush and the Republicans have had such a hard time selling the Medicare law to the American people. Their Medicare law has more than its fair share of dirty laundry, as we can see from this chart. Cost estimates hidden from Congress, the administration violated ethics laws, Members of Congress strong-armed to change their vote. We know this Medicare bill was passed in the middle of the night. The roll call was kept open an unprecedented 3 hours. One Member was literally bribed on the House floor, he claimed, the next day, or they attempted to bribe him on the House floor, a Republican leader attempting to bribe a Republican Member.
Seventy-eight different drug cards with no guarantee. Breaking the deal on drug reimportation which the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) will talk about in a moment. And the crowning point was that Medicare Part B premiums increased a record, 39-year history of Medicare record of 17.4 percent.
This bill had big problems from the start, from its passage, as I just pointed out, using threats and bullying to suppress an internal estimate, the middle-of-the-night vote, the bribery on the House floor. The administration then turned around, spending tens of millions of dollars on infomercial-style ads making Medicare almost look like an item for sale on the Home Shopping Network. That bad process, the middle-of-the-night, the bribery, the campaign contributions, the sleazy kind of tactics to get this bill passed, the expenditure of tax dollar money to sell a bad product to the American people, that whole process, that bad process resulted logically in a bad product.
The drug benefit offers a part-time response to a full-time problem, requiring year-round premium payments for drug coverage that ends in August. And the Medicare law is confusing, handing seniors a stack of discount cards and saying if they cannot figure this out, here is an 800 number. The Medicare law does nothing to contain the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs. Instead, instead, the Republicans and the President went out of their way to write the drug industry a blank check. No surprise there. This bill means $180 billion, with a ``b,'' in extra profits above and beyond what the drug companies' record profits already are, $180 billion in extra profits for this drug bill; and, again no surprise, to complete the circle, the drug companies have given President Bush and Republicans in Congress tens of millions of dollars for their campaign.
We will hear more about these and other serious flaws in the Medicare law from the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) tonight, from the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), and from the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).
I want to get started by talking for a moment about the Bush Medicare premium hike. We heard about it. It was in the papers. Despite the Bush administration's efforts to keep it as quiet as possible, they released the information about the biggest Medicare hike in history, a 17.4 percent premium hike.
They released it on the Friday before Labor Day, hoping people would not notice. But the biggest premium increase in Medicare history, they just cannot keep it quiet. So the news that Saturday was all about the Bush administration's plans, President Bush's plans to impose a 17.4 percent Medicare premium increase. The Republican spin machine is nothing if were not tenacious; so faced with bad news, they did what they always do, they blame the Democrats or they blame someone else. In this case they tried to convince us that Democrats are really the reason the premium hike happened. The fact is Republicans control the House, they have for 10 years, the Republicans control the Senate, the Republicans have had the White House. During the Clinton years, premiums stayed almost even for the last 4 years of the Clinton years, the second term of the Clinton administration, and now they have jumped up.
In fact, before the Bush Medicare bill became law, the nonpartisan Medicare trustees estimated the monthly premium increase for next year would be $2. After the Bush Medicare bill became law, the premium increase jumped to $11.60. That is per month. That is not much to a Member of Congress, but a senior citizen whose Social Security only went up 2, 2\1/4\, 2\1/2\ percent, when faced with a 17 percent increase, well over $100, that is a serious amount of money. Five times larger than the premium increase estimated before the Bush Medicare law.
So where is that money? Where is that billions of dollars, the 17 percent increase, the billions of dollars that seniors have to pay out of their pockets? Whose pockets is that money going into? Where does that money go?
The fact is much of it is going into the pockets of Medicare insurance HMOs. The Medicare law creates a $23 billion slush fund that HMOs can use to lure seniors out of traditional Medicare into their private insurance plans. Seniors already spend 25 percent of their income on out-of-pocket health care costs. The Bush Medicare law hands them a giant increase in their Medicare premiums.
HMO profits already this year have jumped 50 percent over last year. Now we are giving them this $23 billion. And here is how it works: Last March the government, taxpayers, gave the first $229 million payment to insurance company HMOs. In April, taxpayers gave another $229 million payment to insurance company HMOs. In May and June, all the way through this year and all the way through next year, $229 million every month from taxpayers to insurance company HMOs. But do my colleagues know something? Seniors do not get the prescription drug benefit until 2006. So $229 million for 22 straight months go from seniors through this premium increase and taxpayers directly into the pockets of insurance company HMOs before they even get a drug benefit.
So it makes us wonder why. And the answer to the question why is insurance companies and drug companies wrote this Medicare bill, insurance companies and drug companies benefit from this Medicare bill, and the President and Republican leaders get major campaign contributions from the drug and insurance industry. It is all pretty simple. It is also corrupt. It is also outrageous. It is also morally reprehensible. And it is also something that we all need to think about when we make a decision this fall, come November 2.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), who has been a leader particularly in the reimportation issue. One of the most important things this Congress has failed to do; that is, getting the price of prescription drugs down.
I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, they would prefer that this senior not announce that they are getting the $4,000 from the drug companies when they say that, I would understand.
Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, what the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Emanuel) said about Costco, think about that. This is the same company, one in Toronto, one in Chicago, the exact same company, and it is not Costco that is marking up the prices in the United States. Obviously they buy their drugs from a U.S. wholesaler connected with the drug companies, and in Canada they buy them from a Canadian wholesaler which has negotiated cheaper prices. And Costco could not buy its drugs that it is selling at the Toronto store and ship them to its Chicago store because the Bush administration will not let them.
That is why this break in the deal on drug importation is so important that we are simply saying, as the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) have said many times, that we have NAFTA, we have the North American Free Trade Agreement. We are allowed to buy and sell across country lines, but we are not allowed to go to Canada and buy those prescription drugs, bring them back to the United States, and sell them at a much lower price. The same drugs, the same packaging, the same manufacturers, the same dosage, everything.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).
Reclaiming my time, we do not know yet, Mr. Speaker, but it will be less than 3 percent.
I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I want to reiterate that this did not have to happen. We have a very good Medicare system. One of the great things about our system is while we do not always rank at the top around the world in our health care system because a lot of people do not have insurance and all that, if you get to 65 in this country, you in fact do have one of the longest life expectancies in the world because you have very good health care, you have Medicare.
You had a shortcoming. You did not have a prescription drug benefit. You still really do not because it is now a privatized insurance plan. But this did not have to happen. We did not have to take Medicare, one of the great programs this country has ever had, and do what the Republicans did.
I want to outline again, first of all, how they did it. If you do something, if you build a house in a way that is not structurally sound, if you do not use a good quality wood, if you cut corners, you are not going to have a very good house at the end. If you do not have good input into any manufacturing process, you are not going to have a very good manufactured product at the end.
Just again look at how the Republicans did it. They first told the American people and the Congress the bill would cost $400 billion over 10 years. It turns out there was an actuary at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services who said no, it will cost $534 billion; but he was not allowed to speak out. He was threatened by Tom Skully, the administrator, and I assume by the President also, who had to know this too, that it really costs $534 billion.
Mr. Skully has since moved on to work as a lobbyist for the drug and insurance industry, no surprise there, while the President has taken tens of millions of dollars apparently to thank him for the Medicare bill. We will get to that in a moment. But the cost estimates were hidden from the Congress. They simply did not tell us the truth about how much it was going to cost. Then the administrator violated ethics laws by the way they treated that employee and other ways.
Then the way it passed this Congress, we remember that night, the debate started at midnight, the vote started at 3 o'clock in the morning, the roll call was kept open for 3 hours. They literally tried to bribe one Member.
Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, ``persuading'' is a very nice word. They did well beyond persuading. They arm-twisted, they cut deals, they tried to cut deals, they made offers, they tried the carrot, they tried the stick, they tried to bribe a Republican Member from Michigan, who talked about it the next day.
So this whole process, from the conception of the bill written by the drug and insurance industry to the cost estimates hidden and then lied about, the ethics violations, then the middle-of-the-night vote, then the bribing of a Member of Congress, the attempted bribing of a Member of Congress, and then the bill passing in the middle of the night, it is no surprise that this bill led to a product where seniors got a 17.4 percent premium increase. Again, the largest increase in Medicare history.
In the 1990s, in the second half, the premiums stayed almost the same. It was between about $46 and $50, within a dollar or two, every year for 4 or 5 years. President Bush came into office. Now it is up to $78 and some cents. It has gone up double digits more than once, and this time it went up 17 percent. Why? Because of all these things that happened.
This was not an accident that it went up 17.4 percent. It went up that much because they lied about the cost and they covered it up, the President and the administration and the Office of Medicare, CMS. Then they violated election laws. Then they strong-armed Members. Then they tried to bribe somebody. Then the bill contained a huge payout to the insurance industry, $290 million every month for 22 months before the bill, the drug benefit, was even into effect in 2006. So the increase to seniors was 17.4 percent.
Of course, the Republicans had to collect their money from the drug and insurance industries for their campaign this year. Republicans may have a good year this year in the election because they have so much money from the drug companies and so much money from the insurance companies. But it is morally reprehensible and outrageous how they did it, and even more outrageous, what ultimately happened to this bill.
Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) mentioned how premiums are up dramatically, obviously, the 17.4 percent. And before my friends on the other side of the aisle say anything, because I know what they are going to say, because they always say that to this is, well, one of the reasons premiums are up is because they are getting these great new preventive benefits. Well, the fact is preventive benefits cost, and this is all public information, they will add 20 cents to the cost of the premium increase. The premium increase is $11.40. The increase in better benefits, the preventive benefit is 20 cents, so they are getting almost nothing for the $11.40.
So we are seeing the premium increase 17.4 percent; we are seeing the deductible increase, as the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) says; and once the drug benefit comes into effect, we are seeing accelerated, continuing, quickening, sky-rocketing drug prices.
And the reason for that, again, this stuff does not happen by accident. The reason for that is as a payoff to their drug company contributors, because there is no other explanation that I have heard from anybody, including Republicans privately, is they have a provision in the bill that says that the government may not negotiate the price of drugs on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries with the drug companies.
So in other words, think how easy it would be if the country would simply say, the government would say, we have 41 million Medicare beneficiaries. We are going to use them as one buying pool, one purchasing pool, to bring the cost of drugs down. That is what every other country in the world does. That is why drug prices are one-half, one-third, one-tenth in Germany, Japan, Israel, England, or Canada as they are here, because the government intervenes. It is not price controls; they just simply negotiate the price on behalf of seniors. That is what the Veterans Administration does. They bulk buy. They use the purchasing power of many to get a good price from the drug companies.
For the Republicans to write into this Medicare bill, with all the corrupt and outrageous and morally reprehensible and questionable tactics and ethics violations that went into this bill, for them to write a provision into the bill saying, we cannot negotiate for lower drug prices, that absolutely guarantees the prices will go up. So premiums go up 17 percent this year, maybe, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) said, another double-digit increase next year, even bigger, without the threat of an election over them, if President Bush wins the election or if Republicans keep control of Congress, premiums go up, deductibles go up, and the cost of prescription drugs keep going way through the roof.
It is by design. It is clearly what they want. They want to privatize Medicare, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) said; and they move towards a very different system. Back 38 years ago, almost no Republicans supported Medicare, and every time they have had a chance, they have gone after it. They have tried to privatize, take money out of it, tried to underpay providers so that they can rob the system. They have tried to pay off the drug industry and the insurance industry to privatize the system; and now that they control the House, the Senate, and the President, they are able to do all of these things, costing seniors more and seniors getting less; but the drug and insurance companies are doing very well, thank you.
Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time just for a moment, in this House, a group of us wanted to try to amend the bill to take that out so that even though we did not like the bill overall, at least we could have brought drug prices down by working for that discount by using the power of 41 million people purchasing, a Medicare purchasing pool. We wanted to offer that amendment, and because of the corrupt way this bill was brought to the House floor, from the cost estimates to the ethics law to the middle-of-the-night vote, to the bribery, attempts of bribery on the House floor, we were not even allowed to offer that amendment so we could debate it; and let my friends on the other side try to defend the drug companies, but they did not want to do that in public. Everything they wanted to do would be in the middle of the night or not have to do it at all, so they did not even allow us to offer that amendment to even discuss it.
Mr. Speaker, before yielding for a moment to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), one drug in particular, a drug cold Tamoxifen, a breast cancer drug, it is a very effective drug to help women combat breast cancer, costs 10 times in the United States what it costs in France. This is a drug that was developed in large part by U.S. taxpayers, and it is made here. Yet the French pay one- tenth as much for Tamoxifen as do Americans; French women do pay one- tenth as much as American women do. Those are not coincidences; they do not happen by accident. They happen because of the corruption and the violation of ethics laws and the bribery and all that Republicans have engaged in on this medicare prescription drug bill.
If you want to teach a class about how government should not run, if you want to teach a class about how government can be rife with corruption, all you have to do is talk about the Medicare bill. If you explain to students or explain to anyone how this Congress, how this Congress passed this Medicare bill, there is no better example in my 30 years in public office, almost 30 years in public office, there is no better example I have ever seen from either party even at its worst, and both parties do things we sometimes should not do, but we have never seen anything close to the corruption that just permeates this Medicare bill, from the beginning of its process to the 17.4 percent increase, and who knows what in the future.
Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is why the comment of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) earlier was so important. Without the prospect of an election, if President Bush wins this election, if Republicans win the House, it is Katie, bar the door. Premiums, deductibles, copays, who knows what this is going to look like. More insurance company subsidies, more subsidies for the drug companies, two industries that have done so very, very, very well in this country. The drug industry is the most profitable industry in America for 20 years running, with the lowest tax rate. Insurance companies and HMOs had a 50 percent increase in their profits this year over last year, and that is before they got this, before all of this corruption led to their $290 million-a-month payout from taxpayers to HMOs.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) is right. When there is not an election, if President Bush was willing to increase premiums 17.4 percent, a record increase 2 months before an election, granted, he did it on Labor Day weekend when he hoped nobody would notice, but if he is willing to do that 2 months before an election, a very close election, you can wonder what he is going to do when those shackles are off.
Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) for joining me and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) earlier tonight.
Again, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) pointed out, we know what has not worked. We know this bill has been an absolute payoff to the drug and insurance industries. We know how this bill became law. We also know what we could do to fix it, and we would offer again tonight, because we should not come down to the floor and only criticize, we really should offer constructive solutions.
The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) is exactly right. We should have reimportation. We should run the Medicare prescription drug bill through traditional Medicare, not farm it out to insurance companies, and then have to subsidize those insurance companies to ``incentivize'' them to offer the prescription drug benefit.
With reimportation, we also ought to be able to use the buying power of the Federal Government on behalf of 41 million Medicare beneficiaries to get the price down so that people could simply open up their purse or their billfold and pull out their Medicare card and go to the local drug mart in Elyria, Ohio and get a price that is 50 or 60 or 70 percent less than we have today.
We can do this if we have the political will. We could do this if the Republican leadership and the President would wean themselves off of drug company and insurance company contributions. That is what we need to continue to push in our country so that seniors are finally treated equitably by their Federal Government.
I thank my friends from New Jersey and Ohio.