Gerald Kleczka: “I worked for an insurance company before I was elected to the legislature. So with that as an opening, Mr. Speaker, let…”

“I worked for an insurance company before I was elected to the legislature. So with that as an opening, Mr. Speaker, let me say to the body that in my view this is the beginning of the end of the Medicare program. For 38 years Medicare has provided seniors with quality health care, a defined benefit, and whether one lived in California, Alaska, Maine, or Florida, the premium was the same, they knew what the benefit was, and they knew what the services were, and it has worked. So there are those in this House who say there has been a change in the way we deliver medicine today, and that is called drug therapy. Let us add that coverage to the Medicare program and we can use the purchasing power of the Federal Government to get the best deal on drugs for in excess of 40 million people. And there are those on the other side of the aisle who say no, we do not want to do that, and the reason is because that is going to cut into the drug profits of their friends, the drug companies. But know full well, Mr. Speaker, we do it for the VA and it works and it works well. So instead of doing a benefit connected to the Medicare program, what we are doing is we are going to send our seniors out to the private insurance market, we are going to tell them go shop for a drug-only policy. The policy that is being offered in this bill has one big problem, and that is once one spends $2,000 on drugs in any one year coverage stops until their expenditures total $4,900.”