Jack Kingston: “Let us talk about some of these basically Republican solutions, but they are anti-Washington bureaucrat solutions, some…”

“Let us talk about some of these basically Republican solutions, but they are anti-Washington bureaucrat solutions, some of the things that I think that we have been trying to work for: more choice in medicare, a balance in environmental policy, more local control in education, more State flexibility in poverty and welfare programs. Thinking of the Medicare policy, here we have in April last year, a Clinton trustee saying Medicare is going bankrupt and in two years, it will be out of money. Well, they missed that by 11 months. In February for the first time in the history, Medicare ran out of money. So we went in there, said okay, people want traditional Medicare, we understand that. But if our seniors want options, like physician service plans, and if they want to join a managed care plan or take an individual medical savings account, let us give them those options, and by offering the options we can reduce the growth from 11 percent each year in Medicare to 4 percent and head away from the insolvency and the bankruptcy. We can save, protect and preserve Medicare and increase spending per recipient from $4,800 to $7,100 at the same time. Mr. Speaker, a key component of that, as you two know, is cracking down on fraud and abuse. I have with me a Derma-Gran bandage, which a friend of mine in business has sent to me. He said this bandage actually cost 94 cents to produce. It is sold to health care providers for $6. And Medicare, on this 94-cent $6 purchase, gets $36.44 with it.”