Paul Ryan: “I wanted to follow up on what my colleague, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley), was talking about, and that is this…”

“I wanted to follow up on what my colleague, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley), was talking about, and that is this week we here in Congress are considering a prescription drug benefit. But we are doing much more than that; we are working on trying to fix Medicare. Mr. Speaker, it is very important that we realize that when Medicare was created in 1965, it was created at that time to provide comprehensive health care for all seniors over the age of 65. That was the goal of Medicare. It is a good goal. But the problem we face today is in the year 2002 seniors on Medicare are getting 1965 health care. They are not getting the year 2002 health care, because in 1965, we did not have all these wonderful health care technologies. We did not have all these breakthrough prescription drugs. Then it was a take-two-aspirin-and-call-me-in-the-morning kind of society. So Medicare reimbursed people if they needed a procedure, if they needed an operation; and that is how Medicare works today. So what you have seen occur over time is as health care technologies have developed, as we have pioneered pharmaceutical developments and come up with all these breakthrough drugs to make our lives healthier and to make our lives longer, you have seen a big source of cost shifting occurring. So if you need surgery, in many cases today you can have a prescription drug that will help you avoid that surgery, except for the fact that Medicare does not pay for that.”