Chuck Grassley: “it is unfair for Members of the other side of the aisle to give us statistics that say 89 percent of the seniors are in…”

“it is unfair for Members of the other side of the aisle to give us statistics that say 89 percent of the seniors are in for fee-for-service Medicare and only 11 percent are in Medicare+Choice and that is a nationwide average. It is an accurate statistic, but it does not speak to the seniors of America who like Medicare+Choice and I have figures from four cities--Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. In Miami, 45 percent of the senior citizens have chosen managed care, the Medicare+Choice option, as opposed to fee-for-service; New York, 22 percent; San Francisco, 29 percent. In Chicago, it was only 6 percent. That may be one reason why Senator Durbin keeps bringing this up quite regularly. This data is from the Congressional Research Service, and it is as recent as March 2003. When people, wherever they are in the Senate, want to denigrate Medicare+Choice by saying only 11 percent of the people in this country join in and that is such a small percentage and that these figures are evidence it is not liked, go to Miami and ask 45 percent of the citizens who belong to Medicare+Choice why they like it.”