An issue as important as quality, affordable and accessible health care is not and should not be a political game played by the Democrats or the Republicans. It ought to be about what is best for the American people, the people who have placed their trust and confidence in us. 

   Over these past 19 days, I have participated in more than 60 events in my district, as many of my colleagues did during the district work period. All across Arkansas' Fourth District, my constituents told me about the health care crisis they face each and every day in their lives. 

   A health care issue about which I care deeply is providing a voluntary, but guaranteed prescription drug benefit as a part of Medicare. I believe it is time to modernize Medicare to include medicine. Medicare is the only health insurance plan in America that I know of that does not include medicine, yet it is the plan that nearly every single senior citizen in America relies on day in and day out to stay healthy and to get well. 

   Mr. Speaker, I own a pharmacy in a small town in south Arkansas, and living in a small town and working with seniors there, I know firsthand how seniors end up in the hospital running up a $10,000 Medicare bill, or how diabetics eventually lose a leg or require perhaps as much as a half a million dollars in Medicare payments for kidney dialysis. All of these instances are real-life examples that I have seen in my hometown in the small pharmacy that I own back there that I used to work at. Every one of these could have been avoided if people had simply been able to afford their medicine or if they had been able to afford to take it properly. 

   I did a town hall meeting this past week in Hot Springs, Arkansas, one of the more affluent counties and cities in my district. We had more than 100 seniors at that meeting that I conducted in conjunction with the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. At that meeting, we said, raise your hand if you have medicine coverage. Less than 10 hands went up in that room. 

   This is America, and I believe we can do better than that by our seniors, and that is why I will continue to fight to truly modernize Medicare to include medicine, just like we include doctors' visits and hospital visits. It should be voluntary, but guaranteed, and it should be a part of Medicare. 

   That is why the first bill I introduced as a Member of the United States Congress was a bill that basically tells the politicians in Washington to keep their hands off the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds. It is the Social Security and Medicare Off-Budget Lockbox Act of 2001, H.R. 560. 

   Also, during the district work period, I visited a Christian charitable medical clinic in my district, again in Hot Springs, one of the more affluent cities and counties in my district. At that facility, they literally spend millions of dollars with over 500 volunteers equaling millions of dollars in providing care for those who fall through the cracks. They only see those who live below poverty. That is all they see, people who live below poverty and yet do not qualify for Medicaid or any of the other programs. By and large, we are talking about the working uninsured, people that are trying to do the right thing, people that are trying to stay off welfare, but they are working the jobs that have no benefits. 

   Mr. Speaker, I relish the opportunity to fight against the unfair inequities that have created an enormous uninsured population and fight against the big drug companies who continue to price Americans out of the market. It is wrong for the big drug manufacturers to invent drugs in America, oftentimes with government-subsidized research. They are invented in America, they are made in America, and then they send them to Canada and Mexico and sell them for 10 cents on the dollar. That is wrong. That is why I am proud to be cosponsoring legislation that tells the big drug manufacturers that whatever the average price that they sell to other countries is, they have to provide that price to our seniors back in America, one of many first small steps that we must take to finally have a voluntary guaranteed Medicare prescription drug package for every single senior citizen in America.