Setting Schwartz Record on Medicare Straight

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Brad Vasoli
August 11, 2015 President, Hill Media Strategies
267-642-0578
[email protected]

New Website and Video Set Record Straight on Better Medicare Alliance Leader
BewareBMA.com Publicizes Schwartz’s Medicare-Cutting Record in Congress

BALA CYNWYD, PA – A website and video describing Allyson Schwartz’s poor record on Medicare Advantage while in Congress launched today, informing senior citizens about the ex-legislator now at the helm of the Better Medicare Alliance (BMA).

BewareBMA.com seeks to give Medicare beneficiaries and others who may be approached about supporting BMA a proper understanding of Schwartz’s role in cutting Medicare Advantage. Remarkably, BMA states its goal as advocating for and sustaining this important program, also known as Medicare Part C.

The organization has publicized comments of doctors, patients and nonprofit leaders who favor adequate funding for this option within Medicare and condemn earlier cuts to the program. Through private insurers, Medicare Advantage focuses on providing coordinated, enhanced, affordable care.

Yet in voting for Obamacare, Schwartz backed a $156 billion cut to Medicare Advantage. In her ten years in Congress, she voted for cuts to the program totaling over $500 billion.

BewareBMA.com’s creator Brad Vasoli said, "Allyson Schwartz voted for significant cuts to Medicare Advantage while in Congress and cannot be trusted to fight for Medicare Advantage."

"This is plainly hypocritical," Vasoli said. "After hearing the Better Medicare Alliance denounce the cuts that have already taken place, and issue dire warnings about the impact further cuts will have, how can they bring in Allyson Schwartz to fix the problem? She helped create the problem."

Vasoli noted that Schwartz did not merely vote for Obamacare while in Congress but was a major proponent of the massive, complicated healthcare overhaul. In campaigning for Pennsylvania governor in 2014, Schwartz actually boasted of her support for Obamacare, more stridently defending the unpopular program than other Democrats would at the time.

Her decision to head a group advocating for Medicare Advantage policy so soon after leaving Congress demonstrates further hypocrisy, Vasoli said, because Schwartz vocally condemned the "revolving door" of legislators becoming lobbyists just after retiring.

Despite Schwartz’s convenient turnabout on Medicare Advantage, she still does not disavow her left-wing and anti-market approach to health-care policy, remaining a Senior Fellow for Health Policy at the liberal Center for American Progress.

With Schwartz now at the helm of BMA, Vasoli said, the young nonprofit is defining itself as a weak authority on the need for Medicare Advantage, which provides care to over 17 million U.S. seniors.

"Seniors deserve to know that Allyson Schwartz voted to cut Medicare Advantage ten times and by over $500 billion dollars while in public office," Vasoli said. "Schwartz can not be trusted to protect Medicare Advantage."

###