Sylvester Turner: “The Medicare program probably never would have been passed in 1965 if the private insurance industry could have taken…”

“The Medicare program probably never would have been passed in 1965 if the private insurance industry could have taken care of the health care needs of our seniors. That is why we passed Medicare, is because private insurance would not work. I had a letter from a lady who had been in an insurance business 19 years. In fact, I have it here with me. It was a letter that was actually handed to me at a town meeting I had in Shelby County in my district. The lady asked me if I would read this letter on the way to my next stop. This lady writes very eloquently to say she had been in the insurance business 19 years and her letter calls for us to provide a prescription drug benefit under Medicare for our seniors. She tells the story about her mother who died last November at the age of 87. As she was going through her mother's papers, she knew, of course, her mother had been on prescription medicines, I think, for about 20 years, the last 20 years of her life. She was going through all her bills, seeing what she had spent on medicine. She came across a credit card bill that had a balance owed of $6,000, and she was just shocked. She could not believe her mother, as frugal as she was, would have run up a $6,000 credit card bill and not taken care of it. So she wrote letters to Visa. She found out what were all these charges. It turned out all of them were for prescription medicines.”