Prescription Drug and Medicare Improvement Act of 2003 - Continued

PRESCRIPTION DRUG AND MEDICARE IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2003—CONTINUED

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, for over 35 years, Medicare has been a savior for our seniors citizens. It has helped pay their doctor bills, their hospital bills, and their home health bills.

But it has not paid for their prescription drug bills, and millions of seniors across the country have been waiting a long time for the day when prescription drug coverage is offered through Medicare. That day is getting closer.

I am supporting—and the Senate will soon pass—a Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Let me tell you why this is important. In California, four million people are enrolled in Medicare. Every day, far too many of them are forced into the difficult choice of paying for their prescriptions or putting food on the table.

I want to tell you a few of their stories.

I recently heard from a California woman who told me she struggles to survive on $950 a month income. She cannot, she says, afford all of her prescription drugs. She is, unfortunately, all too typical.

A constituent from San Marcos, CA told me that her annual costs for prescription drugs this year will top $10,000.

Another constituent from Indio, CA told me that she has made five trips to Mexico over the last several years to purchase her prescriptions. She drives all day long to Mexico in order to purchase affordable heart medication. She wanted me to remind my colleagues that "thousands of seniors are forced to do this."

A retired physician from Marina Del Rey told me that a pill he takes for his heart disease has gone up 600 percent from
$15 per month to $85.

These seniors—all of our seniors—need and deserve to have Medicare help pay for their prescription drugs. We need to end this situation where seniors are cutting their pills in half or forgoing their medications altogether or skipping meals in order to pay for their prescription drugs. That is unacceptable.

Today, we are making a prescription drug benefit a part of Medicare. And that is why I am supporting this bill—because, at long last, it puts a Medicare prescription drug benefit on the books.

But, this bill is wanting. It has problems. And I have voted for amendment after amendment to fix those problems.

I offered an amendment to close the benefit shutdown. Under this bill, even when seniors have paid and continue to pay
premiums, Medicare stops covering prescription drugs, forcing seniors to pay the entire cost. When that failed, I offered an amendment to ensure that seniors with cancer would never have their benefit stopped.

I supported an amendment by Senator Stabenow to ensure that all seniors could get prescription drug coverage from Medicare itself—the tried and proven system—rather than from a private insurance company.

I supported an amendment by Senator Graham to stop charging seniors premiums when they are not getting any benefits.

I supported an amendment by Senator Lautenberg to start this benefit next year not 2 and a half years from now.

I supported an amendment by Senator Dodd to encourage employers not to drop their retiree health coverage so seniors who have good coverage can keep it. And the Levin amendment, which I also supported, would have ensured that if employers did drop such coverage, Medicare would be there to provide prescription drugs.

I supported an amendment by Senator Dorgan to reduce the premiums that beneficiaries must pay each month. And I supported an amendment by Senator Daschle to limit the disparities in premiums so that seniors in different parts of the country are not paying different premiums for the same benefit.

These amendments would have made the Medicare drug benefit a better drug benefit for seniors. Unfortunately, none of them passed.

But we should not—and I will not—stop trying to make it the best benefit it can be.

The good news is that Medicare will soon, for the first time ever, cover prescription drugs. The better news will be when we fix the problems with this bill and improve the coverage for our seniors. I look forward to the day when enough of my colleagues will join me in that effort.

Finally, let me say that I hope the conference report on this bill—the final version of the bill before it goes to the President—does not come back to the Senate in a way that would provide even less help to seniors or in a way that would undermine the entire Medicare program.