Press Conference with Democratic Senators Following the Vote on Medicare Legislation

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: PRESS CONFERENCE WITH DEMOCRATIC SENATORS FOLLOWING THE VOTE ON MEDICARE LEGISLATION

PARTICIPANTS: SENATOR TOM DASCHLE (SD), SENATE MINORITY LEADER; SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY (MA); SENATOR BARBARA MIKULSKI (MD); SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW (MI)

SEN. MIKULSKI: I want to thank Senators Kennedy and Daschle for standing up for the senior citizens in the way they have.

All my life, I've stood up for the elderly and for ordinary people, and I really thought that the day I would stand on the United States Senate floor and vote for the final decision on a Medicare prescription drug benefit would be a happy day for seniors and would be a happy day for the United States of America. But instead, it is a very sad day, because of a squandered opportunity to truly change history and to truly change the lives of senior citizens.

We had hoped for a genuine benefit that would be affordable for seniors and affordable for the next generation of taxpayers. Instead, we get a skimpy benefit, and we get the kind of deal where seniors could lose their doctor by being forced into HMOs or lose their employer benefits. Instead of a great feeling of joy and relief, senior citizens are now facing anxiety and also disappointment-disappointment at how skimpy, and anxiety about what they could lose, rather than what they could gain.

So we're now going to go out and take the message out to senior citizen centers and to continuing care communities. We're going to go out and do grass-roots, shoe-leather education on what this bill means. We're only forty-five weeks away from the adjournment of the United States Senate. This issue is not finished, and I intend to come back in January and to work with the leadership of the United States Senate Democratic Party to really try to get control of the cost of prescription drugs, to try to redirect these enormous subsidies that are going to insurance companies and put them back into where it should be, where it would be a great day for seniors and a great day for the next generation of taxpayers.

Thank you.

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Q Senator Mikulski, did you ever consider voting for this bill?

SEN. MIKULSKI: Yes. Of course, I looked at it, and my analysis was how would Maryland be affected as well as how would the country be affected. There were aspects in the bill that Senator Stabenow just outlined, the skimpy funding to the rural health-the way we've had to deal with issues related to rural health care, to hospitals in urban areas with an enormously high population of Medicare, the home health aspects. Many of those things were attractive, and the fact that this could be a beginning.

But the more I looked at it, I did conclude that this was the beginning of the end; and for those institutions and providers that could benefit, who truly serve the elderly, we could do this through other means far more effectively for seniors and far better for the budget for the rest of the country.