Emphasizing Preventive Care In Medicare Program

Floor Speech

EMPHASIZING PREVENTIVE CARE IN MEDICARE PROGRAM -- (House of Representatives - May 23, 2007)

Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to highlight the importance of preventive care in the Medicare program.

As we all know, the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 made many important and much-needed changes to the Medicare program. The creation of the Medicare prescription drug benefit was a critically important modernization of the program and has been especially successful in my home State of West Virginia, with 287,000 beneficiaries.

But the prescription drug benefit is just one component of the overall changes in Medicare. If we can encourage more seniors to actually use the preventive benefits, we can help them prevent more costly procedures and longer stays in the hospital.

That is why the ``Welcome to Medicare'' screening is so vitally important. Many of the elements that seniors face today can be effectively managed with prescription medicine and regular visits to their physicians. However, disease management is only effective if we catch the disease early.

I would like to encourage my colleagues to educate their constituents about these important modernizations to the Medicare program so we can all better serve our senior citizens.

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