GOP Doctors Caucus: Save Medicare
Floor Speech
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Mr. BENISHEK. Thank you, Dr. Fleming. I appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight to express my feelings about our cause to save Medicare.
I've been taking care of patients in northern Michigan, in a rural setting, for the last 30 years. It certainly means a lot to my patients to have Medicare there to help them get through their medical problems in their elder years. I am kind of surprised that I've been castigated for voting to end Medicare when, really, I voted to try to save Medicare because of the crisis that's coming forward due to the demographics of our country and the pending bankruptcy of the Medicare trust fund. As I see it, there are really four reasons that Medicare is in trouble.
Number one, there is an increasing number of patients on Medicare every year. There are 10,000 patients a day who are added to Medicare. There are approximately 50 million people today who receive Medicare. In 20 years, I think that number will be 80 million people. That's one reason.
The second reason is that there are a little over three persons paying into Medicare for every person receiving that benefit today; but in 20 years, there will be a little over two people paying. Not only are there going to be 30 percent more people, but there are going to be a third fewer people paying in.
The third problem, of course, is just the general rising costs of medicine. This is an issue where, in our plan to save Medicare, which is a premium support plan in which there are options in your insurance, I think it will help keep those costs down.
Of course, the fourth problem is the Affordable Care Act. The Medicare that people are familiar with today, that the seniors of today have, will not be the same Medicare going forward because the Affordable Care Act has taken $575 billion away from Medicare. That's over $100 billion from hospitals; I think it's like $40 billion from home health care, $30 billion from hospice care, and over $100 billion from Medicare Advantage.
Well, I know in my rural district, we have many small community hospitals that depend on their Medicare payments; and $100 billion taken from each of those small hospitals--you know, those hospitals operate on a razor-thin profit margin. If we take that money away from the small hospital in my district, they may not be there tomorrow. So how would my senior population come see me? They wouldn't be able to come to their local hospital. They may have to go to Green Bay or Marquette or, you know, drive hundreds of miles to get evaluated in an emergency room, for example.
The way things are now is just not sustainable, especially with the Affordable Care Act's impact on Medicare. And to think that if we do nothing, everything will be okay is just wrong.
We've put forward this plan about premium support where you have a choice. It is similar to Medicare Advantage, where in Michigan there are 20 or 30 different plans you can choose from, the one that suits you the best. I think that's a reasonable option. There may be another plan out there somewhere that's equally as good. I haven't seen that. But I'm certainly willing to listen to a plan of how to fix it.
Doing nothing is unacceptable, and I just think that it's just wrong to castigate those of us who are trying to find an answer that will fit most people and be affordable and, like many of the advantages that people have talked to previously this evening, you know, different people's situations. But to do nothing, though, to put your head in the sand like an ostrich and pretend there's no problem is not an option.
So like the speakers before me, I encourage people to speak to their physicians about what the situation is. I'm going around my district in the next several months and am putting together a little Medicare meet-and-greet at the senior citizens' centers at various locales in my district to try to explain this to patients because they don't really seem to have an idea--I said patients; I guess I mean constituents. I was speaking in doctor terms--but they don't have an idea how serious the problem is. And I think part of our problem is getting that message out to other people that this is not something we can ignore, that this is not something that's just going to go away by not dealing with it. And it's certainly not going to go away by castigating people that are trying to find an answer.
So I encourage those people, as NAN mentioned, to speak to their physician. Feel free to call my office to get further information, but realize that we're trying to fix a problem, not ignore a problem.
With that, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
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