Christopher Shays: “I think that more and more people began to understand what was happening, but it required a lot of work to make sure…”

“I think that more and more people began to understand what was happening, but it required a lot of work to make sure people did understand. One last point we should make on the Medicare plan that I thought was really ingenious and I thought would save a lot of money. We were providing in our legislation language that allowed a senior if they found a mistake in their bill to get a percent of what they found. For instance, I have had some seniors who have talked about bills that they saw. First off the bills sometimes are not sent to the senior. Under our legislation we would have required the seniors to have a copy of their bill. We would have required the bills to be put in simple language that an individual could understand. If you had a chest x-ray, you say that. If you had a visit from the doctor, you make clear the visit from the doctor and how long it was and what it was for. Then a senior could say, ``I never had that visit with the doctor, and the $300 charge is not a valid one.'' We would have given a senior, we had not written the regulation, that would have been up to the administration, but they could have determined that, say, 10 or 20 percent of the savings would have gone to the senior. Some seniors would have found that they would have made money. But in the process, they would have saved us literally hundreds of millions of dollars.”