Providing for Consideration of H.R. 3162, Children's Health and Medicare Protection Act of 2007

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Madam Speaker, I think the thing that surprises me the most on this is the lack of honesty on this bill, and I think to the credit of many of my friends on the other side of the aisle, I don't think you've been told what's in this bill.

This isn't about poor, uninsured children. My dad used to say, if a salesman comes to you and talks about the needs of his kids before he talks about the quality of his product, beware; you're getting sold a bill of goods.

That's exactly what has happened today and in the previous days and why they don't want to talk about the bill, why they don't want amendments.

Why? It's the single largest cut in Medicare's program history. You are cutting Medicare to millions of seniors. I wouldn't want to talk about it either.

And what else are you doing? You're cutting stroke victims when they're in in-patient rehab. Stroke victims, our seniors, are going to cut that. Doctors, you're cutting doctors. You're cutting oxygen equipment and wheelchair services to seniors. You're cutting seniors' home health care. You're cutting hospital payments. You're cutting skilled nursing care for the sickest seniors in nursing homes. You're cutting dialysis services for kidney cancer patients. You're cutting imaging services for cancer and cardiac patients.

You're telling businesses we're going to make it more expensive for you to give health care to the working poor.

You are doing that in this bill. I bet many of you don't even know that. You are also telling seniors, by the way, once we slash the largest in history amount of money out of Medicare, your part B premiums are going up. We're going to make it more expensive for you. Less doctors taking Medicare patients, higher small business costs, higher Medicare premiums, not one dollar for the 700,000 under 200 percent of poverty who need our help.

Shame on you.

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