On the recordJanuary 6, 2011
I thank the gentleman. I would like to just underscore what our colleague from Oregon has just said. There is so much concern, obviously--and for good reason--about the future of Medicare. The most conservative estimate I have seen is that health care reform extends the fiscal solvency of Medicare by 8 years, and some estimates are much more than that. So to simply throw that overboard as well as to talk about this doughnut hole--these thousands of dollars that senior citizens are paying full freight on for medicines they simply must have--and this gap in coverage is ridiculous, and we are finally fixing it. What insurance policy do any of us know about that would have that kind of gap in coverage? As the gentleman from Colorado said, $250 payments this year. I mean, I guess this raises the question as to whether even that might be taken back; but in future years, we are going to close that doughnut hole, and we are going to extend the solvency of Medicare. Anybody concerned about the health care for this country's senior citizens simply has to be very, very alarmed about what is going on in this House right now.
