Frank Pallone: “it has gone from basically $66 to $78, about an $11 increase, the biggest we have ever had. President Bush says it is…”

“it has gone from basically $66 to $78, about an $11 increase, the biggest we have ever had. President Bush says it is because of the high costs of health care. That is simply not the case. The bottom line is there are two major reasons why this increase is so high. One is what the gentlewoman mentioned, when they passed the so-called, and I call it ``so-called'' because it really is not a Medicare bill, it is a privatization bill. When they passed their so-called Medicare prescription drug bill, they increased the amount of money that would go to the HMOs, the insurers in general, but particularly the HMOs, in order to entice them to cover senior citizens. And the result is that a significant amount of this increase, and this increased premium is going to go to pay those HMOs and those insurers to entice them to get into the Medicare program which, as the gentlewoman knows, most of them do not want to get into any; and no matter how much money you give them, they are probably not going to get into it. The second thing is they have been raiding the trust fund. Just like Greenspan was saying a couple of weeks ago during the break, he got up and talked about how the Social Security Trust Fund was running dry, same thing with the Medicare Trust Fund. Why? Because the Republicans are borrowing the money to pay for their tax cut. There is a huge deficit. Where is the money borrowed from? The Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund.”