Kevin Brady: “Here we go again, trying to scare our seniors, privatizing, ending Medicare as we know it, all the phrases the pollsters…”

“Here we go again, trying to scare our seniors, privatizing, ending Medicare as we know it, all the phrases the pollsters have used and tested to make sure that we get a partisan message out rather than a drug plan for our seniors. The truth of the matter is if we were to adopt this proposal tonight, Medicare would go bankrupt sooner. We would be adding the prescription drug plan that we seriously need, but we would not make any changes making Medicare better and last longer so that the next generation would have a Medicare system they can count on. The fact of the matter is we are not trying to end Medicare as we know it. We are trying to create it as Congress knows it, as Members of Congress have in the health plans and choices we have today. The fact of the matter is that there is no effect on Medicare entitlement by the House plan. Seniors will have entitlement to defined benefits just the way they do today. They will have access to traditional fee-for-service Medicare all throughout the country. What they will have when we defeat this proposal, as we will later, is something they do not have today, which is a choice of Medicare plans, health care plans that are more to what they need, not what Washington needs, one that suits a changing senior population.”