Judd Gregg: “the Ensign amendment addresses what the Senator from Ohio started speaking on. He anticipated, I guess, this amendment.…”

“the Ensign amendment addresses what the Senator from Ohio started speaking on. He anticipated, I guess, this amendment. To try to explain the way the Medicare system works today, Part A you pay for, theoretically, with your hospital insurance. Part B, which deals with doctors, you pay for, theoretically, with a premium, but the premium is subsidized to the tune of 75 percent of the cost of the premium. Part D, you don't pay for anything, for all intents and purposes, except for the insurance, to the extent you buy insurance. But the actual coverage that is federally supplied is not paid for. Part D is a drug benefit. This amendment says that high-income individuals, people with incomes over $80,000 individually and $160,000 jointly, should have to pay a fair proportion of the premium of Part D that is now being subsidized by working Americans. Let me try to put it in context. There is a single woman working in a restaurant in downtown Des Moines or there is a mother and father working on an assembly line in Poughkeepsie or there is a father working in a garage in New Hampshire. Those individuals, working for a living and trying to make ends meet, trying to do all the things you want to do to make your life better, are paying the cost of the drug insurance for retired Senators and for people who have extraordinary amounts of money--for example, Bill Gates' father.…”