Henry Waxman: “I think the points that have been made by some of my Democratic colleagues about the impact of the bill passed when we…”

“I think the points that have been made by some of my Democratic colleagues about the impact of the bill passed when we were last in session to cover prescription drugs for seniors is a point well taken. That bill is inadequate, and the reason we are passing this legislation is that we want to protect retired Federal employees. Well, we do want to protect them, but we have to protect them because we passed a Medicare prescription drug bill that will give incentives for employers, public and private, to drop insurance coverage for their retirees for prescription drugs. What in effect we are saying is we do not want Federal retirees to face the plight that other seniors are going to face when they are retired and their employers decide to let them go get their Medicare prescription drug benefit under the Republican-passed bill. It will be a lot less expensive, but it will be much less a benefit, in fact, a very inadequate benefit, for those retirees. That leads me, however, to say that we should oppose the bill that the Republicans passed for the Medicare prescription drug benefit and make sure that we pass a really decent prescription drug benefit for all Medicare beneficiaries.”