Marco Rubio Warns Obama's Health Care Law Could Hurt Medicare

Speaking to the media in Panama City on Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., praised the Medicare Advantage in very personal terms -- and warned it could be gutted due to President Barack Obamas health care law.

My moms on Medicare Advantage, Rubio said. Its actually the only choice program in the Medicare program that actually allows you to shop between different insurance companies, and they compete on the basis of quality and price. You know, they fight for your business every year. One will say, We offer free transportation. The other guy says, We cover all the drug costs. So they compete for your business.

One of the things the law does is it takes a tremendous amount of money out of the Medicare Advantage program, not to fund Medicare or to make Medicare more solvent, but to fund the health care law, Rubio added. And so youre going to see benefit reductions in Medicare for people under Medicare Advantage. You could potentially, in some places in the country, see carriers drop out of the Medicare Advantage, and youre going to start to hear from Medicare Advantage patients on that as well. Right now the carriers are under a gag order by the Department [of Health and Human Services]. Theyre not allowed to inform their clients -- their patients -- of that. But theyre going to get a benefit letter here soon and itll explain to them, This year you used to get X, Y and Z but you dont get that anymore. And people are going to start to be upset about that, as well.