Pete Stark: “we've heard the President, Republican Members of Congress, Administration officials, and Republican Senators claim time…”

“we've heard the President, Republican Members of Congress, Administration officials, and Republican Senators claim time and time again that their Medicare prescription drug plan will provide seniors with the same choices as Members of Congress get. They've said that if FEHBP is good enough for Federal employees and Members of Congress alike, it should be good enough for seniors. That's a great message and I'm sure it sells well with seniors. Unfortunately, their rhetoric fails to match the reality. The drug benefit they are willing to provide to Medicare beneficiaries is far less than the drug benefit provided to Federal employees. We've been trying to expose this hypocrisy for months. Today, the Republicans point out the truth themselves. This bill, authored by Representative Tom Davis, requires that each health plan in FEHBP agree to provide the same drug benefits to Federal retirees as they do to active employees. In other words, it protects Federal employees from ever having their retiree drug benefits reduced to the level that the bill's author just supported for the rest of our nation's retirees! Representative Davis represents an awful lot of Federal employees and he knows that the Medicare drug benefit is inadequate.”