David Thomas: “now we are beginning to make some progress. I thank my colleague the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) because, as we…”

“now we are beginning to make some progress. I thank my colleague the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) because, as we heard him say, he is not coming back so he wanted to speak from his heart. What we heard from his heart was that we ought to give military retirees and in fact we ought to give veterans a card, as he said, to go anywhere to get the health care they deserve. That is not the Taylor amendment. The Taylor amendment says they have got to go to a military hospital on a military reservation. Now, I tell my friend the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) that I am quite sure that Bethesda Naval Hospital, in the middle of this military area called Washington, does a pretty good job with military retirees. He ought to come out to China Lake in the middle of the Mojave Desert, he ought to go to Edwards Air Force Base and take a look at their military hospitals. They are not Bethesda, believe me. Those people deserve to get the best health care they can. They do not deserve to be forced to get it on a military base. That is what this Taylor amendment does. What we did was to set up some programs to figure out how we could merge the private sector assisting the military through the public sector. The Taylor amendment may be well-intentioned, but what they are trying to do is guarantee that every military retiree gets their Medicare benefits at a military hospital. That is the wrong service to provide to our military retirees.”