thanks for posting.
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congress/?q=node/77531&id=9038180"Mr. WEINER. Let me say very briefly what the single payer--consider it Medicare fraud. Ask your neighbor, if you are not old enough to have Medicare, ask them how their service is.
Every year they do a survey of all Medicare beneficiaries; 96 percent say they are satisfied with it, which any program or any business would be glad to have that. They also ask the providers, the hospitals, the doctors: Rate it on a score of 1 to 6. Last year the average score was 4.5. That is pretty good. That is essentially an A minus.
What it does is say, Look, we are not going have high overhead. We will not pay you the bust-out top of the market. For every single person you are going to get prompt payment. Everyone is going to be covered. You are going to have customers all around the neighborhood, and we will try to do some smart things to contain cost.
Now make no mistake about it. The canard that's raised--wait a minute. Medicare is a successful program. We don't like it, but there are costs to it. It's true. We have more older people. To some degree Medicare's success is why it's having trouble financially.
We are living 10 years longer today than we were when Medicare was passed. By the way, it's not 10 years in our teenage years, we get 10 years at the end of life when we have more health care costs.
But if we want to solve a problem in Medicare, you call your Congressman. You get on the phone. The taxpayers employ those people. If you want to fix your private insurance, if they shut you down, they kick you out, you get on an 800 number or you buy shares in their company. Those are the two ways you influence it.
What we are saying is, let's have a more efficient model, let's have a model that's lower cost, let's have a model that you know works. If you don't think it works, ask our Republican friends how come they keep voting for it over and over and over.
I offered an amendment in the Energy and Commerce Committee. I see my colleague from the Judiciary Committee, but the Energy and Commerce Committee--I said, You don't like single-payer health plan, put your money where your mouth is. I offered an amendment on the day of the 44th anniversary of Medicare to eliminate the program. They say they don't like government-run health care. Eliminate the program.
Not a single one of those people--and I am prohibited on the floor from calling them phonies--not a single one of those people voted ``no''--or voted ``yes'' to eliminate Medicare. Oh, no, no, no, we love Medicare. You like Medicare if you are 65 but not if you are 64?
Not if you're 60, not if you're 45. Why? What's the intellectually honest explanation of that? If you believe the program that you're going to fight and defend--you should have it when you're 65--what's magical about that?
When my dad retired at 60, he wasn't eligible to get Medicare, and he went to the private insurance market. They said, Fine. For $15,000 a year, a retired guy, why not give that guy Medicare? And then maybe in a couple of years we give younger guys Medicare. And we get down to the twenties, where you are, we give you Medicare.
The point is, we know what works. You want simple? We got simple. Medicare for all Americans. You want inexpensive, you want low overhead? We got that. Medicare for all Americans. You want something that every doctor accepts? Medicare for all Americans. You want complete, 100 percent choice of what doctor you go to? Medicare for all Americans.
Now, one thing it doesn't do. It doesn't skim off 20 percent for profits. You won't see TV commercials with people sitting in rocking chairs saying, Boy, I'm glad I got Medicare. No, they're going to put that money into health care.
Does it need some fixing? Yeah. We do some dumb things. We'll put $900 for someone to be in a hospital bed. We won't pay $50 to put up a handrail when one-third of all seniors get into a hospital emergency room because of slips and falls. We do some dumb things, and we need to fix it.
But I've got to tell you something. As a Member of Congress representing 650,00, 660,000 people in Brooklyn and Queens in New York City, in God's country, I would much rather fight with CMS, fight with the Federal bureaucracy which, by the way, I get far fewer complaints about them than I do about private insurance companies, than having to hope that I get a good response from my insurance company.
So that's basically the philosophy behind the single-payer thing. I have to
take exception to one thing the President said in his speech. He said, Some people in this Chamber want a single-payer system like they have in Canada. No. I want a single-payer system like we have in the United States of America. I want a single-payer plan that my father has. I want a single-payer plan that my mother has.
I want a single-payer plan that took my grandparents, whose generation had a 30 percent poverty rate before Medicare, and is now at 8 percent. That's the American single-payer.
So don't let people distract you by, Oh, it's Europe; it's socialism; it's Canada. It's the United States of America. We know how to do health care in the United States, and it's called Medicare. The Democrats created it. The Republicans now embrace it. It's got bipartisan support. Let's expand it.
I appreciate it. Let me just yield on this point. First of all, I appreciate it. I'm not a member of the Progressive Caucus. The final stage of the application, as you know, is the talent competition, and I was never able to make it through that last threshold.
But the fact that you, in hour-long blocks, have real thoughtful conversation--this present company excluded--but real thoughtful conversations about this issue that explore the actual facts and the underpinning is exactly why this has been, I believe, a proud moment in our American civic life.
You put aside the people yelling, call people names, put that aside for a moment. This is something all Americans see through the lens of their own experience. They feel very compassionate about it.
So I ask all of the people watching today and all of the people here observing this debate, ask someone about their experience with Medicare and you'll see it's a pretty good ambassador for a government program that works pretty well that we should try to expand to more Americans.
I thank you for your kindness."
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