Grassley convened a hearing of the Special Committee on Aging, which he chairs, to look at S. 1895, The Medicare Preservation and Improvement Act of 1999, sponsored by the Committee's ranking member, Sen. John Breaux, and by Sen. Bill Frist.
"It's not a matter of whether we'll save Medicare," Grassley said. "It's a matter of when and how. It may not get done this year, but it will get done in the next 18 months. Our hearing today plants the seeds for reform, and we'll reap the benefits of our harvest later."
Grassley said he chose Medicare as the Committee's first hearing topic this year to demonstrate his commitment to preserving and improving the health care coverage on which 39 million Americans rely.
Grassley said the reasons fueling Medicare reform are well-known. One reason is financial. Medicare will go bankrupt within 15 years if Congress and the President do not take action. The longer the delay, the more painful it will be to make the changes in the program that are needed, he said.
Another reason is the need to modernize, Grassley said. Medicare is old-fashioned in a lot of ways. One high-profile example is that it doesn't cover prescription drugs, which are increasingly vital to the nation's health care system, Grassley said.
Grassley said the Breaux-Frist plan responds to both engines driving reform. He said he has not yet chosen to co-sponsor the proposal but feels it provides a solid framework for a complex reform discussion. Grassley said the questions in the Medicare debate include:
?whether this plan would provide health coverage for beneficiaries that is as reliable as current Medicare coverage and exposes beneficiaries to no heavier financial burden;
?whether the proposal would provide equity for rural areas. A hearing witness, Iowa hospital administrator Steve Goeser, discussed how the Breaux/Frist plan might affect rural areas;
?whether the government could provide a prescription drug benefit that beneficiaries could afford without making Medicare's financing problems even worse than they are now;
?and whether the Breaux-Frist bill's Medicare Board could oversee a reformed Medicare system and provide the many protections for beneficiaries that everyone now expects from the Health Care Financing Administration.
Grassley said he hopes to disprove skeptics who predict that Congress won't take on these tough questions in an election year.
"We should seize the opportunity to make progress and build consensus on a plan to save Medicare," Grassley said. "Everything's in place for us to get to work. We have a plan on the table. We have bipartisan agreement on the need for reform. We have millions of older Americans who expect ? and deserve ? results."