Rick Allen: “We should be so lucky and the American people should be so lucky. We would be better off if we got a real plan. There is…”

“We should be so lucky and the American people should be so lucky. We would be better off if we got a real plan. There is no reason to put up a plan which is just a shell, the kind of plan which is going to be supposedly funded or operated by an insurance industry that does not want to do it; that purports to cover everyone, but in fact will only make economic sense for people at the lower-income levels and at the end of the day will not be a Medicare prescription drug benefit at all. It will be some sort of shell of a benefit. Many of the proposals seem to be saying that one way to pay for this is to drag money out of other health care providers. But the doctors and the home health care agencies, they cannot keep going. When you really think this through, it is worth remembering a little bit of history. The reason in 1965 that Medicare was created was because the private insurance market would not cover people who were older and sicker than the general population, people over 65. In 1965, half of all seniors in this country had no hospital coverage. It was the trip to the hospital and surgery that would drive people into bankruptcy. That is still true today for people who do not have health insurance. But our seniors have it. They have Medicare. The problem, of course, is they do not have the kinds of prescription drug coverage they need.”