David Thomas: “Reclaiming my time, did the gentleman or the gentleman's staff ever call the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on…”

“Reclaiming my time, did the gentleman or the gentleman's staff ever call the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Ways and Means? The answer is if you did everything you could to work it out, it seems to me the subcommittee of jurisdiction, which has worked on the balanced budget amendment for the DOD subvention, which has worked with the Committee on Veterans Affairs on the VA subvention program, and which is currently working in the Medicare Commission to make sure that those individuals who served time in the military, and especially were in theaters of combat, are taken care of. The gentleman continues to give this blanket assurance that everything has been done. I simply continue to repeat, you never once worked with the subcommittee of jurisdiction. I believe that is one of the reasons that all these flaws are in the amendment. We have taken care of it in every other area that we have worked with combining Department of Defense and veterans interests with Medicare. They are not in this amendment. It is flawed. If someone would indicate that we could sit down and resolve the flaws in the amendment, then I am far more interested in going forward. What I heard as a resolution for those individuals who are going to give up their Medigap is that three years from now, when this demonstration ends, maybe we can pass a law that will give them a chance to get their Medigap back. I do not think that is a very comfortable assurance for military retirees.”