Henry Waxman: “Mr. Speaker, the House has passed a bill, the Senate has passed a different bill. There will be a conference. The…”

“Mr. Speaker, the House has passed a bill, the Senate has passed a different bill. There will be a conference. The Republican leaders today have said to us that when they go into conference, they are going to try to hold the House position, but they are going to have to move toward the Senate to get an agreement. The chairman of the Committee on the Budget said we have got to be aware that structural changes are going to come down the line at some point, and he is not for this change this week. The point is that we know what the House Republicans were for in Medicare in the last Congress. They wanted structural changes that would have ended the Medicare program as we know it and would have put a lot of elderly people into the lowest priced HMO that would survive profitably by denying them care. The Senate reconciliation bill contains a number of ill-conceived provisions relating to Medicare. They increase the burdens on beneficiaries with home health copayments. They have further balanced billing beyond what now exists in the law. They have premiums increase dramatically for higher income people in a very complicated and unworkable way.”