FATHER OF MEDICARE Insurance

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. Back in the mid-1990s, he advocated curbing the growth of Medicare and putting "Social Security back on the table." Now he says he would use the bulk of the savings from repealing the tax cuts for a huge new expansion of health care, that he could balance the budget by curbing spending, that his only Medicare fix would be in how it is administered and that "Social Security doesn't have an insolvency crisis." "If you turn the economy around, " he says, "the additional payroll taxes will help enormously." And so the self-styled, straight-talking outsider, the flinty fiscal disciplinarian is falling back on one of the oldest Washington tropes: Economic growth is the answer

. "A strong economy is not going to solve the long-run challenge facing Medicare and Social Security, " says Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute

Transcript Former Sen. Dale Bumpers

. You're going to back to your committees, you're going to get on this legislative agenda, you're going to start dealing with Medicare and Social Security and tax cuts and all those things which the people of the country have a non-negotiable demand that you do

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. (Applause.) From the day we began, our health care initiative has been designed to strengthen what is good about our health care system: the world's best health care professionals, cutting edge research and wonderful research institutions, Medicare for older Americans

. Every plan before the Congress proposes to slow the growth of Medicare

. Medicare must be protected, and it should cover prescription drugs, and we should take the first steps in covering long-term care

. (Applause.) To those who would cut Medicare without protecting seniors, I say the solution to today's squeeze on middle-class working people's health care is not to put the squeeze on middle- class retired people's health care

Aetna History

. 1966 Aetna pays the first Medicare claim

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