Remarks on Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage and an Exchange With Reporters - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, June 19, 2000

June 14, 2000

The President. Good afternoon. Senator Daschle, Representative Gephardt, Secretary Shalala, and I have just met with these leaders of organizations representing America's seniors, people with disabilities, and community pharmacists. We spoke about the great need for Congress to give all Medicare beneficiaries an affordable prescription drug option. We spoke about the merits and the shortfalls of new legislative proposals on prescription drugs now emerging in the House.

Funding for Enforcement of Gun Laws

Before I go into the details of the discussions this morning, I want to briefly touch on another pressing priority before the House, funding for enforcement of our gun laws.

For years, the Republican leadership has emphasized the importance of enforcing our gun laws as a reason for opposing other commonsense gun safety measures. Yet they have failed so far to put their money where their words are. Today a House appropriations committee appears to be on the verge of approving a bill that absolutely guts our administration's proposal for the largest gun enforcement initiative in history.

Incomprehensible though it may be, their bill fails to provide any funding at all to hire 1,000 new State and local gun prosecutors to help take gun criminals out of our communities and put them behind bars. It undermines our efforts to replicate the success of Richmond's Project Exile, another key initiative the Republicans have always said they support. And it fails to provide funding to expand research and development of smart gun technology.

I ask the Republican leadership to reverse the current course, to live up to the rhetoric, to fully fund the national gun enforcement initiative.

Of course, no society can prevent every tragedy or outrage, but we can save lives with a combination of new commonsense gun laws and enhanced enforcement of the laws already on the books. We're going to have to do this in a bipartisan manner, if it's going to get done, and to recognize the American people want both strong enforcement and strong prevention.

Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage

Now, back to prescription drugs. The American people here have also made their intentions clear. Our seniors want affordable, dependable coverage for the prescription medications that lengthen their lives and improve its quality. That's the message we heard yesterday from Ruth Westfall, a retired teacher from rural Idaho, the message I heard from leaders I met with a few moments ago. That's certainly what Senator Daschle and Republican Gephardt are hearing from their constituents and what they're fighting hard for up on the Hill.

All the leaders here today recognize that adding a voluntary prescription drug benefit is not just the right thing to do; medically speaking, it's the smart thing to do. No one creating the Medicare program today would think of doing so without prescription drug coverage. Prescription drugs now can accomplish what once could be done only with surgery.

That's why we have proposed the comprehensive plan to provide a prescription drug benefit that is optional and accessible to all our seniors; a plan that ensures that all older Americans, no matter where they live or how sick they are, will pay the same affordable premiums; a plan that uses price competition, not price controls, to guarantee that seniors will get the best prices; a plan that would cover catastrophic drug costs, as well as regular drug bills; a plan that is part of an overall effort to strengthen and modernize Medicare, so we won't have to ask our children to shoulder the burden when the baby boomers retire.

There is growing bipartisan support for prescription drug action this year, and that's good. But the leaders and advocates here today are still concerned that the proposals the House Republicans are putting forward later this week will not ensure that all seniors have an affordable prescription drug option.

We have grave concerns because the Republican plan builds on the already flawed private Medigap insurance market. As recently as yesterday, the insurance industry reiterated its belief that a Medigap insurance model simply will not work for prescription drug coverage--the insurance industry, itself, has said this repeatedly--and that private insurers will not willingly participate in such a program. Even if some private insurers do participate, the premiums inevitably will be higher than those under a Medicare drug plan. Yesterday you heard Ruth Westfall say what I have heard countless seniors say, that they can't afford the Medigap coverage that presently is offered.

We have grave concerns because the Republican plan relies on a trickle-down scheme that would provide a subsidy for insurers and not a single dollar of direct premium assistance for middle class seniors. We have grave concerns because the so-called choice model offered by the Republicans breaks up the pooled power of seniors to purchase drugs at the most affordable prices, forcing insurers to constrain costs by restricting seniors' choice of drugs and choice of pharmacies.