Christopher Shays: “I would make this point, it is not like the telephone company where you found you were with AT&T, the next moment you…”

“I would make this point, it is not like the telephone company where you found you were with AT&T, the next moment you found yourself part of MCI or another telephone service. You will stay in Medicare, the traditional fee-for-service, the Blue Cross/Blue Shield model, the 1960's version that exists today; you will stay in that program unless you proactively decide to become part of another program. And I make this point, that you, as a Member of Congress and I as a Member of Congress, who are Federal employees and get Federal health care, we get choice, and we are saying to beneficiaries that they for the first time will have choice. They will stay in the present system unless they get a getter choice, and the better choice is they may get eyeglass care, they may get dental care, they may have a health care plan that says their beneficiary cost will not be as high or that they will pay no copayment, they may get a rebate in the amount that they pay, and they will decide. Now, let us just say they make a choice, and they did not like the service. We are allowing them for the next 24 months to go right back into that fee-for-service.”