Medicare Access and Chip Reauthorization Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I urge colleagues to oppose this amendment. What Senator Cornyn seeks to do is to strike an idea that originally came from the Heritage Foundation. If it is adopted, sick people will definitely sign up, healthy people will stay on the sidelines, premiums will skyrocket, according to the Congressional Budget Office, by as much as 20 percent, and start then what amounts to a death spiral for the affordability of American health care.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.
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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Lee amendment.
Colleagues, the Lee amendment is the bluntest possible instrument that would cut spending across government on every possible program. The SGR, the doctors reimbursement formula, has always been a fake. The $140 billion in this bill eliminates the budget fakery that Democrats and Republicans believe has gotten out of hand. The underlying bill gets rid of the budget fakery.
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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to this amendment. Today, the Medicare Program is a fee-for-volume system. The underlying bill junks this and turns out the lights on millions of users.
The underlying bill before the Senate says the future will be about rewarding value and good quality care for our Medicare patients. The Cotton amendment embraces the outdated status quo and says there is no need to coordinate care, no need to pay for value, no need to pay for quality for our Medicare patients. I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.
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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I will be very brief. I think tonight is a milestone for the Medicare Program--a lifeline for millions of older people. That is because tonight the Senate is voting to retire the outdated, inefficiency-rewarding, commonsense-defying Medicare reimbursement system.
As Senator Hatch noted, it has been bipartisan; it has long been bipartisan. I think this is an important night for the Senate and it is going to be long remembered.
I yield the floor.
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