In 1965 we established the Medicare program because the private insurance industry demonstrated it could not provide affordable access to health care for seniors.

Today, nearly 40 years later, science has advanced beyond any of our expectations.  Pharmaceuticals can dramatically improve the quality of life for those living with illness, and every day they save lives.

Unfortunately, the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs has denied many Americans these life-changing advances in medicine.  The Medicare program is simply not adequate without a prescription drug benefit.  For the millions of seniors living on a fixed income, many of whom are spending more than half their monthly social security checks on prescription drugs, we simply must provide the coverage they need.

But I am afraid that some have lost track of the important lessons of 1965 – that market forces are often inadequate to the task of providing health care coverage for seniors.  I recognize the power of the market, but here it has simply fallen short.

The most recent example is the Medicare + Choice program.  The hope was that HMOs would offer seniors equal or better care at less cost than Medicare.  At first, it seemed to work.  We paid the HMOs slightly less than it cost to cover a senior through the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program.  Seniors enrolled in the program had low co-payments and at least a few more benefits. 

But then the HMOs said they needed more money – a lot of it.  So we gave it to them. Then they started pulling out of a lot of areas – especially in rural America, like my district on California’s Central Coast.  Where they didn’t leave, they cut back on benefits while still asking Congress for more money.

The Medicare + Choice program has been fraught with problems from the beginning.  Yet now the Administration comes to us with a proposal that would put seniors at the mercy of many of the same private insurance companies.

The prospect of forcing seniors into private health insurance plans, which have shown little interest in serving areas where they cannot make money, in order to get the coverage they need is cause for deep concern.  Make no mistake; this is the first step in privatizing the entire Medicare program.  We’ve seen the shortcomings of the private insurers in this system, and we ought to be cautious before we turn over to them this cornerstone of security in the lives our nations’ seniors.

Our role in Congress should be to make sure that every senior has access to affordable prescription drugs.  The vast majority of Medicare beneficiaries – 84% or 34 million seniors – are enrolled in the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program.  We must not force them into private insurance coverage that has not proven it can work for seniors.

The Administration contends that private health insurers providing prescription drug benefits would enable more “choice” for seniors, similar to the options provided by the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).  But this comparison does not hold up.  The senior population served by the Medicare program is a vastly different group, both larger in number and much less profitable to insure.

The Medicare program was a promise made to our seniors.  It is time we followed through on that promise.  Last year, I supported the plan offered by the Democrats that provided seniors a reliable, voluntary benefit, within the Medicare structure, comparable to the coverage they receive for other Medicare services.  Unless we can find a suitable compromise, the partisan agenda to privatize Medicare, which is unnecessary and unrelated to the need for a prescription drug benefit, will once again block progress on this important issue.

###