Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce the Strengthening Medicare and Repaying Taxpayers, SMART, Act with Senators Wyden, Burr and Ben Nelson. This bi-partisan effort will help strengthen and protect Medicare by ensuring greater reliability and efficiency of Medicare reimbursements. The SMART Act proposes common- sense solutions to problems in the current Medicare Secondary Payer, MSP, system, at no cost to the American taxpayer. With Washington's sky high debt and deficit, we need to do everything we can to ensure that vital entitlement programs, such as Medicare, are cost effective and working for the very people they were designed to help. Under the MSP program, if a Medicare beneficiary is injured by a third party and a settlement is pursued as a result of that injury, the third party is responsible for paying for the individual's medical expenses. If Medicare, now the ``secondary payer,'' pays any of the costs associated with the injury, it is entitled to reimbursement. Numerous problems exist with the current MSP system; each of these are addressed by the SMART Act. Under current law, Medicare does not have a pathway to disclose their MSP amount until after a case has been settled or adjusted--which creates an uncertainty that impedes beneficiaries and third parties from reaching a legal settlement.…”