Mr. BURGESS. I thank the gentleman for yielding. And actually that is Ft. Worth, Texas. We are sensitive about that in Ft. Worth.

I wanted to spend just a minute this evening. We have heard a lot. The gentleman is quite right. His leadership on this, too, by the way, has just been exemplary. I am reminded tonight of how many nights we have spent here on the floor of this House talking about this very issue since 2003 when we both started.

But I wanted to take a moment. We have heard a lot about how complicated the program is, and that it is just too complicated, seniors just can't understand it, and make it simpler and then come back and try again. I need to address that.

Remember that if you picked up the Washington Post from a while ago, read the article where the new Medicare benefit is so complicated no one can understand it, no one's going to sign up for it, but I would remind the Speaker and the gentleman from Georgia that this was a Washington Post article from 1966 when Medicare first started. The program itself was complicated then. But guess what? We got a little bit better and a little bit better year over year, to the point where the Medicare system now is one of the more successful Federal programs.

But instead of talking about how complicated it is, let me take another tack. And I want to show you, Madam Speaker, just how easy, how easy it is to sign up for the Medicare program. You take your prescription drugs in one hand so you can read the labels and you can read the dosage and you can read the amount. I apologize, that is not a real Medicare card, but I don't own one yet. But this is a reproduction of a Medicare card. It is actually red, white and blue if you have a real one, and it will have your Medicare number on it.

Now, if you have got your prescriptions, and you have got your Medicare card with your name and your Medicare number on it, you have got all the information you need to sign up for this program. Then take the very simple step of calling 1-800-MEDICARE, talk to the nice people on the other end about your medicines, the dosage you take and the amount that you take, and they will help you work through this program.

Now, for those savvy enough to be on the Internet, there is an Internet plan finder tool that I have found is very, very user-friendly, very amenable to working through it. What I tell people to concentrate on when they look at this program is look at it from the standpoint of cost, coverage and convenience.

If you just print out the plans that are available in the State of Texas, there are 20 plans offering several different options, so there are 47 overall combinations of plans that are available. If you just looked at those in tabular form, it is pretty easy to pick out the cheapest, the next cheapest and the third cheapest. So very quickly you have done a survey that, based on cost, can tell you the least expensive plan.

Now, you also need to look at more than just the monthly premium. You need to look at the deductible. You do need to know about coverage, because that is critical. Make certain that the plan you select covers the medications that you are taking.

And then finally, convenience. Do you want to do mail order? Do you want to do one of the chain drug stores? Do you want to do the corner drug store, the mom-and-pop pharmacy down on the corner? Each of those is available to any senior signing up on this program, and all of that information on cost, coverage and convenience is readily available on the plan finder tool.

Finally, I want to tell the gentleman from Georgia, I am going to be fairly brief tonight, but the gentleman from Pennsylvania was talking a lot about the costs and the cost savings available with this program. He mentioned about the cost of treatment of heart disease and how that can be lowered with this program. I would submit that since the mid-1960s, according to figures from the National Institutes of Health, there has been a reduction in cardiac deaths in this country such that there were 800,000 less premature deaths from cardiac disease than would have been predicted back in 1965 or 1966 when Medicare was first stood up. The reason that that is important is those reductions in premature deaths are largely the result of pharmaceuticals, timely treatment of blood pressure problems, timely treatment of diabetes, the introduction

[Page: H1834]of the statins 10 or 15 years ago that has made such a significant difference in the prevention of heart disease.

Yes, we are going to save money with this program, but more importantly, we are going to be saving lives. And I think most Americans would agree that is the most important commodity.

Madam Speaker, with that I will yield back to my friend from Georgia and remain close at hand if he has any questions that he needs for me to fill in on.

Once again I would remind the Speaker that 1-800-MEDICARE is where you can get easy access to the information on how to enroll for this program.

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