Steve Buyer: “I come to the House currently to discuss the Medicare issue, and this is a tough issue that is facing us. It is one…”

“I come to the House currently to discuss the Medicare issue, and this is a tough issue that is facing us. It is one whereby Members can choose a political route, or they can choose a route of policy. The numbers that are presently in front of us cannot lie. These numbers are cold. They will not go away, and that is that we have this: the demographics, the baby boomers when they become seniors, there is a smaller population behind them, and the present Medicare model as we know it cannot exist unless we go to a 20 percent payroll tax. There is a desire here within Congress to deliver a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Well, if we just add prescription drugs to Medicare without addressing the long-term solvency, we have only exasperated the insolvency of Medicare as we know it. Therein lies our challenge. So I believe if we just added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare without making this long-term solution to the solvency of Medicare, that is a very faulty approach.”