Dear Congressman Greenwood, I never thought that I would come to this time in my life and find myself neglecting my health out of sheer necessity. I am a widow, 70 years of age. My medical problems require drugs that amount to over $1,000…

I have the pleasure today of hosting an organization of young people in from my district who call themselves ``What If?'' What if young people knew how to create their future every day through the goals they set and the decisions they…

They were not very happy about that. We all remember Chairman Rostenkowski's car being rocked by a group of seniors because essentially what the Congress was saying is that if you already have this benefit, we are going to make you pay for…

that is one of the problems. They say, where there is a will, there is a way. There is a will to get this done. Republicans want to do it. We happen to be Republicans; we have been working hard with our Republican colleagues. Democrats on…

In 1965, America proved its humanity and proved the level of its civilization by caring for its elderly and eventually extending that Medicare benefit to the disabled. When it did so, it did not include a prescription drug benefit. It did…

If I can refer to this chart here, the gentleman referred to the difference between us and the seniors, and despite the color of my hair I am hoping to continue to be able to see that difference between myself and my parents. And yet if we…

These prescription drugs, as miraculous as they are and as beneficial as they are, are increasingly expensive. Not only are they expensive, it is not simply that the price of a particular medicine goes up and up and up; but as this chart…

our staff, and we with our staffs, have been working very hard at this for a long time. The goal is clear, but the way to get there is complex and it is difficult and it requires some very complex calculations about if we raise the…

That is an issue for our children. How they are going to be able to pay for the costs of our retirement. This issue gets complicated, and I know some of the viewers across the country watching this tonight are maybe trying to decipher all…

I think that is true on the Democratic side of the aisle, and I think it is true in the White House. But we know we cannot get it done by ourselves. We can bring a Republican bill out here, a purely Republican bill, and if the Democrats in…

security is what all seniors want. It is what we will want when we are seniors, and that is the security, the peace of mind to know that I do not have to worry about whether I can afford the drugs that my doctor says I need. It is as…

I do not think there is a moment that I have been more proud to be a Member of this body than I am today. The Children's Health Act is Congress's Mother's Day present to the Nation as well as an early Father's Day present. What makes us…

reclaiming my time, as we have discussed a little bit, there have been criticisms of the plans. And one of those criticisms has been, what part of the debate has been, what are we really going to do to lower the cost of prescription drugs…

It is really different from a stop-loss provision that I have talked about for an individual senior. That is a stop the loss out of his pocket. What the gentleman from Pennsylvania is talking about is the Federal Government telling the…

And since Americans are not used to buying drug- benefit insurance, this is a little alien to them. But if we think about buying automobile insurance, if we went to buy automobile insurance that would provide liability coverage for $10…

I think what is important, as we compare the President's plan to the House Republican plan to other plans that may be in the Senate and elsewhere, what is important to understand is that there are some similarities. The low-income folks in…

the question is why should the Congress not just say to every retiree, everyone on Medicare, every beneficiary: we will pay 100 percent of all of your prescription drugs benefits. The answer is, in part as you said, the younger generation…

So I think we are getting actually very close to the point where we will, in fact, enact a prescription drug benefit for Medicare. In 1965, when Medicare was created, it was a big step in the American health care history. Prior to that…

the fundamental goal is to provide coverage for everyone. What has been discouraging and frustrating to me is that we have crafted this plan so that it benefits everyone regardless of income. If one is at the lowest end of the scale, we…

Why are we here today? What are we doing here? The advocates of this legislation have said that we are here to save lives, to prevent abortions. But that is not true. It is not what we are doing here. This bill is going to be vetoed, as it…

clearly what we want to do is we want to provide choice. One of the first charts I held up demonstrated that a significant portion of America's elderly, two out of three already have prescription drug coverage and about half of those, or…

We have to remember that it is not a zero sum game, that when we add a pharmaceutical benefit, it does not simply and only add to the costs of Medicare. Because in many ways, using a pharmaceutical product, using a medicine, is the least…

the whole concept of aging is changing dramatically in this country. It was not very long ago that people in their sixties and their seventies, because of the state of the health care, they became feeble a lot faster and were not as vital…

It takes about something on the order of 9 years and half a billion dollars to bring a product to market, to bring a new pharmaceutical product to market. That is a very expensive proposition. We need to make sure that there are industries…

In 1965, when Medicare was created of course it was created without a prescription drug benefit. It seems unimaginable now in the year 2000 that the Congress would create a program to provide for the health care of the elderly without…