Restoring Medicare Advantage Choice for Our Seniors

Floor Speech

(Mr. ROTHFUS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. ROTHFUS. Mr. Speaker, Medicare Advantage provides quality coverage to many seniors in western Pennsylvania. It is popular because it provides more options and increased care coordination.

Until 2011, seniors were able to take advantage of an annual open enrollment period from January through March and make adjustments if the plan they chose did not meet their needs. Unfortunately, the Affordable Care Act eliminated this option.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that one of the Nation's largest Medicare Advantage providers had dropped thousands of doctors from its network. As a result, seniors may be unsure about whether they need to switch plans to continue seeing their doctors when the current open enrollment period ends this Saturday.

This uncertainty underscores the importance of the Medicare Beneficiary Preservation of Choice Act, H.R. 2453, which Congressman Kurt Schrader and I introduced earlier this year. This bill would restore seniors' freedom to try their plans and make changes.

I thank my 13 Republican and Democrat colleagues for joining me in advocating for our seniors, and I encourage Members on both sides of the aisle to support this commonsense and bipartisan legislation.

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