Date: 2003-06-26
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker. in the next few hours. the Republicans in the Congress will engage in the greatest raid and diminishment on middleclass health care benefits in the history of this country. Benefits that have been built up over the last 50 or 60 years in this country that have enabled middleclass individuals to have some health security. to have some access to prescription drugs. to have access to the health care that they and their families need. will come under assault. It begins with this legislation. medical savings accounts. where millions of Americans who now have good health care plans. where they share the payment of those plans with their employers. between employers and employees. will find out that those plans are going to be substituted by highthreshold. highcost. highdeductible plans. and the theory is that they can pay for that out of their medical savings accounts. Millions of Americans are going to wake up and find out that the health care plans that they have available to them today will not be available to them tomorrow. Just as with the passage of the Medicare bill. the prescription drug bill that we will do later tonight. some 30 percent of the people who have prescription drug benefits will wake up and find out that they will get a lesser benefit under the Medicare prescription drug benefit than they are currently getting today. Millions of senior citizens will discover that they have lost their prescription drug benefit as they know it. and they will have to accept something much less than that. When we come back from the Fourth of July break. we will complete this trifecta assault on middleclass health care plans when the Committee on Education and the Workforce reports out the Association Health Care Plan proposal. Because the CBO. the Congressional Budget Office tells us that over 8 million Americans will lose the health care they have today. and what will be substituted will be a health care plan that is much less comprehensive than they have today. Mr. Speaker. 8 million Americans. 8 million middleclass Americans. And the answer that the Republicans suggest to us is we can all just save and pay for that ourselves. Well. if we look who is paying into 401(k)s. we know that most Americans do not have that disposable income. That is why they have employerbased health care systems. But starting tonight. that employerbased health care system. that system that has done so much to keep people healthy. to keep people out of poverty. to keep them .from losing their homes. is about to be shredded. and the assault is complete and its comprehensive. and it runs from the seniors to new and young families trying to raise children. All of these people will find out. If my colleagues do not think it is going to happen. just look at the employers who are announcing that these cutbacks are going to come who are supporting the association health care plans. who are supporting medical savings accounts. these health savings accounts tonight. and who are supporting prescription drugs. Because they are lining up to get rid of their obligations for prescription drugs. for health care for young families. health care for older families. all in the name of their cost savings. But that will dramatically change the middle class in this country and what they have come to know as health care security. But for the elderly it is going to be even more dramatic. When we look at the prescription drug benefit. it is interesting that the largest elderly group in the country. AARP. everything that .they say is essential to protect senior citizens. and a prescription drug benefit is not in this bill. Read their letter. It is not in this bill. They wish it was. they hope it will be. but it is not here tonight.