Mike Levin: “We do not have to destroy Medicare to add a prescription drug benefit. Add prescription drugs to Medicare. We do not…”

“We do not have to destroy Medicare to add a prescription drug benefit. Add prescription drugs to Medicare. We do not need to change Medicare to add a prescription drug benefit. Keep Medicare. It is not outdated. Bring it up to date, if we want to put it that way, by putting in a prescription drug benefit in Medicare. But you do not do that. You are using prescription drug benefits to change and destroy the Medicare system. The actuary says, under the Republican plan, by 2010, the likely increase in costs for the present Medicare will be 25 percent. You are not only eroding the possibility of use, you are, in the end, destroying Medicare as we know it. And we Democrats will be glad to go to the electorate in 2004 with the Republican notion that Medicare is outdated, I say to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) or to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin), the notion that Medicare is failing, ask the seniors of this country whether it is outdated or whether it is failing. They are going to say, we need prescription drugs; give it to us. Our Republican colleagues do not do that, though they use it as an excuse for changing or destroying Medicare.”