Ron Paul Quotes.com 2003 Ron Paul Chapter 71 Ron Paul Quotes.com: Medicare Funds For Prescription Drugs 26 June 2003 Home Page   Contents Congressional Record (Page H6113)   Cached Not linked on Ron Paul’s Congressional website.

Medicare Funds For Prescription Drugs 26 June 2003 2003 Ron Paul 71:1 Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, while there is little debate about the need to update and modernize the Medicare system to allow seniors to use Medicare funds for prescription drugs, there is much debate about the proper means to achieve this end. However, much of that debate is phony, since neither H.R. 1 nor the alternative allows seniors the ability to control their own health care. Both plans give a large bureaucracy the power to determine which prescription drugs senior citizens can receive. Under both plans, federal spending and control over health care will rise dramatically. The only difference is that the alternative puts seniors under the total control of the federal bureaucracy, while H.R. 1 shares this power with “private” health maintenance organizations and insurance companies. No wonder supporters of nationalized health care are celebrating the greatest expansion of federal control over health care since the Great Society. 2003 Ron Paul 71:2 I am pleased that the drafters of H.R. 1 incorporate regulatory relief legislation, which have supported in the past, into the bill. This will help relieve some of the tremendous regulatory burden imposed on health care providers by the Federal Government. I am also pleased that H.R. 1 contains several good provisions addressing the congressionally-created crisis in rural health and attempts to ensure that physicians are fairly reimbursed by the Medicare system. 2003 Ron Paul 71:3 However, Mr. Speaker, at the heart of this legislation is a fatally flawed plan that will fail to provide seniors access to the pharmaceuticals of their choice. H.R. 1 provides seniors a choice between staying in traditionally Medicare or joining an HMO or a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO). No matter which option the senior selects, choices about which pharmaceuticals are available to seniors will be made by a public or private sector bureaucrat. Furthermore, the bureaucrats will have poor to determine the aggregate prices charged to the plans. Being forced to choose between types of bureaucrats is not choice. 2003 Ron Paul 71:4 Thus, in order to get any help with their prescription drug costs, seniors have to relinquish their ability to choose the type of prescriptions that meet their own individual needs! The inevitable result of this process will be rationing, as Medicare and/or HMO bureaucrats attempt to control costs by reducing the reimbursements paid to pharmacists to below-market levels (thus causing pharmacists to refuse to participate in Medicare), and restricting the type of pharmacies seniors may use in the name of “cost effectiveness.” Bureaucrats may even go so far as to forbid seniors from using their own money to purchase Medicarecovered pharmaceuticals. I remind may colleagues that today the federal government prohibits seniors from using their own money to obtain health care services that differ from those “approved” of by the Medicare bureaucracy! 2003 Ron Paul 71:5 This bill is even more pernicious when one realizes that this plan provides a perverse incentive for private plans to dump seniors into the government plans. In what is likely to be a futile effort to prevent this from happening, H.R. 1 extends federal subsidies to private insurers to bribe them to keep providing private drug coverage to senior citizens. However, the Joint Economic Committee has estimated that nearly 40 percent of private plans that currently provide prescription drug coverage to seniors will stop providing such coverage if this plan is enacted. This number is certain to skyrocket once the pharmaceutical companies begin passing on any losses caused by Medicare price controls to private plans. 2003 Ron Paul 71:6 Furthermore, these private plans will be subject to government regulations. Thus, even seniors who are able to maintain their private coverage will fall under federal control. Thus, H.R. 1 will reduce the access of many seniors to the prescription drugs of their choice! 2003 Ron Paul 71:7 Setting up a system where by many of those currently receiving private coverage are hired into the government program exacerbates one of the major problems with this bill: it hastens the bankruptcy of the Medicare program and the federal government. According to Medicare Trustee, and professor of economics at Texas A&M University, Tom Saving, the costs of this bill could eventually amount to two-thirds of the current public-held debt of $3.8 trillion! Of course, estimates such as this often widely underestimate the costs of government programs. For example, in 1965, the government estimate that the Medicare Part B hospitalization program would cost $9 billion in 1990, but Medicare Part B costs $66 billion in 1990! 2003 Ron Paul 71:8 This new spending comes on top of recent increases in spending for “homeland security,” foreign aid, federal education programs, and new welfare initiatives, such as those transforming churches into agents of the welfare state. In addition we have launched a seemingly endless program of global reconstruction to spread “democratic capitalism.” The need to limit spending is never seriously discussed: it is simply assumed that Congress can spend whatever it wants and rely on the Federal Reserve to bail us out of trouble. This is a prescription for disaster. 2003 Ron Paul 71:9 At the least, we should be debating whether to spend on warfare or welfare and choosing between corporate welfare and welfare for the poor instead of simply increasing spending on every program. While I would much rather spend federal monies on prescription drugs then another unconstitutional war, increasing spending on any program without corresponding spending reductions endangers our nation’s economic future. 2003 Ron Paul 71:10 Congress further exacerbates the fiscal problems created by this bill by failing to take any steps to reform the government policies responsible for the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs. Congress should help all Americans by reforming federal patent laws and FDA policies, which provide certain large pharmaceutical companies a governmentgranted monopoly over pharmaceutical products. Perhaps the most important thing Congress can do to reduce pharmaceutical policies is liberalize the regulations surrounding the reimportation of FDA-Approved pharmaceuticals. 2003 Ron Paul 71:11 As a representative of an area near the Texas-Mexico border, I often hear from angry constituents who cannot purchase inexpensive quality imported pharmaceuticals in their local drug store. Some of these constituents regularly travel to Mexico on their own to purchase pharmaceuticals. It is an outrage that my constituents are being denied the opportunity to benefit from a true free market in pharmaceuticals by their own government. 2003 Ron Paul 71:12 Supporters of H.R. 1 claim that this bill does liberalize the rules governing the importation of prescription drugs. However, H.R. 1’s importation provision allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to arbitrarily restrict the ability of American consumers to import prescription drugs — and HHS Secretary Thompson has already gone on record as determined to do all he can to block a free trade in pharmaceuticals! Thus, the importation language in H.R. 1 is a smokescreen designed to fool the gullible into thinking Congress is acting to create a free market in pharmaceuticals. 2003 Ron Paul 71:13 The alternative suffers from the same flaws, and will have the same (if not worse) negative consequences for seniors as will H.R. 1. There are only two differences between the two: First, under the alternative, seniors will not be able to choice to have a federally subsidized HMO bureaucrat deny them their choice of prescription drugs; instead, seniors will have to accept the control of bureaucrats at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Second, the alternative is even more fiscally irresponsible than H.R. 1. 2003 Ron Paul 71:14 Mr. Speaker, our seniors deserve better than a “choice” between whether a private or a public sector bureaucrat will control their health care. Meaningful prescription drug legislation should be based on the principles of maximum choice and flexibility for senior citizens. For example, my H.R. 1617 provides seniors the ability to use Medicare dollars to cover the costs of prescription drugs in a manner that increases seniors’ control over their own health care. 2003 Ron Paul 71:15 H.R. 1617 removes the numerical limitations and sunset provisions in the Medicare Medical Savings Accounts (MSA) program. Medicare MSAs consist of a special saving account containing Medicare funds for seniors to use for their routine medical expenses, including prescription drug costs. Unlike the plans contained in H.R. 4504, and the Democratic alternative, Medicare MSAs allow seniors to use Medicare funds to obtain the prescription drugs that fit their unique needs. Medicare MSAs also allow seniors to use Medicare funds for other services not available under traditional Medicare, such as mammograms. 2003 Ron Paul 71:16 Medicare MSAs will also ensure that seniors have access to a wide variety of health care services by minimizing the role of the federal bureaucracy. As many of my colleagues know, an increasing number of health care providers have withdrawn from the Medicare program because of the paperwork burden and constant interference with their practice by bureaucrats from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The MSA program frees seniors and providers from this burden, thus making it more likely that quality providers will remain in the Medicare program! 2003 Ron Paul 71:17 There are claims that this bill provides seniors access to MSAs. It is true that this bill lifts the numerical caps on Medicare MSAs; however, it also imposes price controls and bureaucratic requirements on MSA programs. Thus, the MSAs contained in this bill do nothing to free seniors and health care providers from third party control of health care decisions! 2003 Ron Paul 71:18 Mr. Speaker, seniors should not be treated like children by the federal government and told what health care services they can and cannot have. We in Congress have a duty to preserve and protect the Medicare trust fund. We must keep the promise to America’s seniors and working Americans, whose taxes finance Medicare, that they will have quality health care in their golden years. However, we also have a duty to make sure that seniors can get the health care that suits their needs, instead of being forced into a cookie cutter program designed by Washington, DC-based bureaucrats! Medicare MSAs are a good first step toward allowing seniors the freedom to control their own health care. 2003 Ron Paul 71:19 Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment on the procedure under which this will was brought before the House. Last week, the committees with jurisdiction passed two separate, but similar Medicare prescription drug bills. In the middle of last night, the two bills were merged to produce H.R. 1. The bills reported out of Committee were each less than 400 pages, yet the bill we are voting on today is 692 pages. So in the middle of the night, the bill mysteriously doubled in size! Once again, members are asked to vote on a significant piece of legislation with far reaching effects on the American people without having had the chance to read, study, or even see major portions of the bill. 2003 Ron Paul 71:20 In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, both H.R. 1 and the alternative force seniors to cede control over which prescription medicines they may receive. The only difference between them is that H.R. 1 gives federally funded HMO bureaucrats control over seniors’ prescription drugs, whereas the alternative gives government functionaries the power to tell seniors which prescription drug they can (and can’t) have. Congress can, and must, do better for our Nation’s seniors, by rejecting this command- and-control approach. Instead, Congress should give seniors the ability to use Medicare funds to pay for the prescription drugs of their choice by passing my legislation that gives all seniors access to Medicare Medical Savings Accounts.

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