Political Quotes

“I want to agree with my colleagues from New Jersey and from Florida. Medicare was originally created because of the failure of the free enterprize system for insurance. If I owned an insurance company, I would not want to sell insurance to someone over 65, although we do have some who only want to take the healthiest, as we know, because we cannot afford the premiums. Any actuary will tell us what is the quote of a premium for someone over 65, $1,500 a month, $2,000 a month, because they are ill. That is why Government had to step in, free enterprise could not take up the need for some type of health care for senior citizens. In fact, under the current system, almost half of all seniors have an income of below $15,000 a year. Approximately 10 million widows have an income of less than $8,000 a year. So this is not a program for the rich, as we sometimes hear we have all these rich seniors. Despite all the out-of-pocket costs that seniors already have to pay, 52 percent of Medicare's costs now go to 5 percent of the most sickest senior citizens. So we are not talking about a program for the wealthy. We are talking about a program for seniors who make less than or earn $15,000 a year under their pension plans or Social Security. Let me talk a little bit about raising the age to 67. That may be something that the actuaries can say, well, we are living longer. I do not know if we are living that necessarily healthier longer.”