Andre Carson: “I rise today to warn our seniors, a tax for your health will soon be upon you. The tax will be placed on those of you…”

“I rise today to warn our seniors, a tax for your health will soon be upon you. The tax will be placed on those of you who have not signed up for Medicare part D by the President's arbitrary deadline. The changes to the system are confusing to lawyers, seniors, and Members of Congress. We are forcing seniors to navigate unnecessarily confusing new programs and telling them do not pick the right program, just pick any program to prevent yourself from being faced with large penalties for joining late. We must step back and extend the deadline until the end of the year to ensure that seniors do not pay the price for a poorly laid out part D program through higher premiums for life. I have had several town hall meetings in my district in Indianapolis dealing with this whole Medicare quagmire. Over 1,000 seniors participated; and, unfortunately, they left just as confused as when they came. These are not the questions that we should have had our seniors asking. I would encourage all seniors not to get taxed further by failing to meet the May 15th deadline. Mr. Speaker, thousands of seniors came to a series of town hall meetings in my district alone and their stories were almost always one in the same, what must I do, how can I get that done and how much will it cost my already taxed budget. These are not the questions we should have our seniors asking as they lie awake in bed at night. We must not add another tax onto the budgets of our seniors.…”