Rob Andrews: “I thank my friend for yielding and for his compliment. When our mothers and fathers go to the doctor or the hospital, we…”

“I thank my friend for yielding and for his compliment. When our mothers and fathers go to the doctor or the hospital, we want to be sure they get the best health care that can possibly be delivered and that their doctor and their family think they ought to get; and that health care should never be subject to the strategic plan of any insurance company or the whims of the marketplace. Because it is not profitable, as a general rule, to take care of the aged and the infirm, President Johnson and this Congress, in 1965, created the Medicare guarantee, and they guaranteed that our seniors and people with disability would get the care they need irrespective of the whims of the marketplace. The majority brings this bill to the floor today because they raise fears about what might happen to the Medicare guarantee 10 years from now. There is a very important question about Medicare before this Congress, but it's coming about 8 days from now, not 10 years from now, when the majority will bring yet another budget that systematically unravels and ends the Medicare guarantee. Call it what they will, when you have a system where the healthiest and the most prosperous and, in some cases, the youngest retirees can opt into a private insurance system, those that will be left in regular Medicare will be the aged and the infirm and the poor. Medicare will then go the way of Medicaid, which their budget cuts by nearly 40 percent, according to some estimates.…”