Political Quotes

“Seniors must have a guaranteed drug coverage plan. Has the private market through Medicare+Choice plans been able to do this? On the contrary. The privatization experiment with Medicare+Choice has shown that privatization is a failure. Privatized health care works by limiting coverage to healthy people and shifting more costs onto patients. Medicare HMOs have done just that by raising premiums and co-payments and dropping patients every year. Last year, the Medicare+Choice program eliminated coverage for half a million seniors. For those few seniors who still have coverage, they pay more and they get less. This experience should teach Congress that relying solely on the private market is a losing strategy for seniors. Only Medicare has been able to provide reliable, stable coverage. Only Medicare has been able to minimize excess waste and overhead in order to keep costs down. To compare, private plans have 15 percent administrative costs compared to 2 percent for Medicare. A GAO report has confirmed that Medicare HMOs are responsible for increasing Medicare costs.”