Ed Whitfield: “Mr. Speaker, tonight is the culmination of 4 or 5 years of debate of a prescription drug benefit for our senior citizens…”

“Mr. Speaker, tonight is the culmination of 4 or 5 years of debate of a prescription drug benefit for our senior citizens here in America. I hear a lot of the criticism and I have heard it all day today about private insurance companies being involved in this program that we are submitting tonight. Yet, I would remind those on the other side of the aisle that private insurance companies are involved in Medicare as it exists today and has been for some time because it is the private companies that are responsible for the reimbursement of our health care. So private companies are already very much involved in our Medicare system today. I would also say, what benefit are seniors going to get from this program? First of all, if they are 135 percent of the poverty level and below, and I can tell my colleagues, in my district that is about 60 percent of them, they are not going to have to pay anything. The government's going to pay their premium for them. The only thing that they will have to pay is a $2 small copay for a generic drug and a $5 copay for a name-brand drug. What is wrong with a program that provides free medicines for seniors who today cannot get them?”