Pete Stark: “Not only will this legislation save Medicare money, it will save the lives of many of its beneficiaries.”

Basically Republicans want to take away Medicare's guaranteed benefits and replace it with a voucher and put the insurance companies back in charge.

I dislike the notion that we need to increase costs for beneficiaries in order to fix the physician payment system.

The CBO has said it would lead to an increase in overall national health spending as seniors and people with disabilities are moved into less efficient, more costly private plans.

I happen to be a fan of his bill to get rid of this idea that if a physician doesn't take Medicare, they are out of the system for 2 years.