Medicare

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. President, every year I hear from hundreds of constituents about the transformative impact Medicare has on their lives. For many of them, Medicare is literally the difference between life and death, between living with dignity or in abject poverty. It is as dramatic as that.

Before we passed Medicare 51 years ago, slightly more than half of our seniors--in Hawaii we call our seniors kupuna--had health insurance. Only half. The insurance they had was very expensive and did not cover much. Millions could barely afford routine medical care, let alone treatment for a catastrophic illness. For the past 50 years, our seniors have approached retirement with the peace of mind of knowing that Medicare will be there for them. It is part of a commitment we have made to care for and honor our kupuna.

To understand what life would be like for our seniors without Medicare, we don't need to look to the distant past before we had Medicare; we can learn from what happened, for example, 3 years ago to a family in Maui, to Phyllis and Tommy Duarte of Maui.

Phyllis and Tommy contacted my office after they received a notice that the Social Security Administration had canceled Phyllis's Social Security payments. Like millions of kupuna across the country, Phyllis and Tommy live on a fixed income and depend on Social Security to pay their bills. After several months without receiving her Social Security check, Phyllis could no longer pay the premiums for her Medicare Part B plan. They threatened to terminate her coverage, which is when she contacted my office. Fortunately, we were able to resolve the situation within a few weeks. Phyllis started receiving a cheek and continues to pay her premiums. Only a short time later, Phyllis fell and broke her arm. It required surgery and years of ongoing physical therapy. The final bill: $200,000. Phyllis and Tommy were only weeks away from understanding just how devastating it would be to live without Medicare coverage.

It is because of people like Phyllis and Tommy that I fought tooth and nail to make sure Medicare will always be there for our kupuna. It is why I have been on the frontlines to beat back every attempt to privatize and voucherize Medicare since I have been in Congress.

That is why I will do everything in my power to stop our new President and his allies in Congress from shredding this crucial safety net program. Over the past month, Speaker Ryan has made it clear that he intends to resurrect his plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program for private insurance. Under his system, private insurers could deny or delay coverage because seniors would no longer have Medicare's consumer protections. His plan caps the value of these vouchers to the point where they will not keep up with the rising costs of health care. The Congressional Budget Office calculated that the Ryan plan would increase out-of-pocket expenses by $6,000 per year for millions of seniors--millions who are already on fixed incomes. My colleagues know that I am not given to hyperbole, but this attempt to privatize Medicare is a clear and present danger to millions of seniors.

I know from talking with kupuna in Hawaii that one of the things they worry about most is their health and whether their needs will be met. Anyone who talks to seniors and understands what they are going through would recognize that privatizing Medicare means seniors will have to go out and find medical insurance on the private market. How can you think they will be able to accomplish that? Are insurance companies going to step up to take care of some of the most vulnerable members of our population even though it is not profitable for them to do so? I don't think so.

During the campaign, President-Elect Trump said the right thing about protecting Medicare, but choosing Tom Price to head the Department of Health and Human Services sends the opposite message. For years, Congressman Tom Price has been Paul Ryan's closest ally in his crusade to privatize and voucherize Medicare. The Ryan-Price plan would hurt more than 217,000 seniors in Hawaii and millions across the country, including those who live in Janesville, WI, and Roswell, GA. I wonder how Speaker Ryan and Congressman Price would explain to seniors in their districts, their States, how voucherizing Medicare will not hurt them.

Saving Medicare is going to be a daunting fight, but I am not going to shy away from it. I am going to do whatever I can, whenever I can, to protect Medicare for our seniors.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source