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Updated: June 29, 2025
Taxpayers shouldn't pay for the cost of lung cancer, emphysema, and other smoking-related illnesses, the tobacco companies should. So tonight I announce that the Justice Department is preparing a litigation plan to take the tobacco companies to court and with the funds we recover to strengthen Medicare.
Listen to this, if we set aside 60 percent of the surplus for Social Security and 16 percent for Medicare over the next 15 years, that savings will achieve the lowest level of publicly-held debt since right before World War I in 1917.
We have all agreed to save much more. We have all agreed to stabilize the Medicare Trust Fund. But we must not abandon our fundamental obligations to the people who need Medicare and Medicaid. America cannot become stronger if they become weaker.
My Plan includes the following key features: Nearly 15 million additional poor would receive fully-subsidized comprehensive coverage; pre-natal and delivery services are provided for all pregnant women and coverage is provided for all acute care for infants in their first year of life; the elderly and disabled would have a limit of $1,250 placed on annual out-of-pocket medical expenses and would no longer face limits on hospital coverage; all full-time employees and their families would receive insurance against at least major medical expenses under mandated employer coverage; Medicare and Medicaid would be combined and expanded into an umbrella Federal program, Healthcare, for increased program efficiency, accountability and uniformity; and strong cost controls and health system reforms would be implemented, including greater incentives for Health Maintenance Organizations.
No child should be without a doctor just because a parent is without a job. My Medicare plan modernizes Medicare, increases the life of the trust fund to 10 years, provides support for respite care for the many families with loved ones afflicted with Alzheimer's, and, for the first time, it would fully pay for annual mammograms.
Now, traditional care or managed care, every American deserves quality care. Millions of Americans between the ages of 55 and 65 have lost their health insurance. Some are retired. Some are laid off. Some lose their coverage when their spouses retire. After a lifetime of work, they're left with nowhere to turn. So I ask the Congress, let these hard-working Americans buy into the Medicare system.
Growth of our major health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid, will be slowed, but protections for the elderly and needy will be preserved. Second, we must not relax our efforts to restore military strength just as we near our goal of a fully equipped, trained, and ready professional corps.
Now, I ask this Congress to resist the tobacco lobby, to reaffirm the FDA's authority to protect our children from tobacco and to hold tobacco companies accountable, while protecting tobacco farmers. Smoking has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars under Medicare and other programs. You know, the states have been right about this.
Saving Social Security, Medicare, creating U.S. accounts, this is the right way to use the surplus. If we do so, if we do so, we will still have resources to meet critical needs and education and defense. And I want to point out that this proposal is fiscally sound.
Together, we will reclaim America's schools, before ignorance and apathy claim more young lives. We will reform Social Security and Medicare, sparing our children from struggles we have the power to prevent. And we will reduce taxes, to recover the momentum of our economy and reward the effort and enterprise of working Americans.
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