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I will never turn Medicare into a voucher. No American should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies. They should retire with the care and dignity they have earned.

For all their scare tactics, President Obama and Democrats have no plan whatsoever to preserve Medicare for future generations - or protect it for today's seniors and those nearing retirement. They did, however, cut Medicare by $700 billion to bankroll Obamacare.

If Republicans eliminate Medicare, America will become a country in which you can never retire - and once you physically can no longer work, you are desperately poor until you die.

I believe we must protect Medicare's guaranteed benefit, and I will oppose any effort to dismantle Medicare and turn it into a voucher system.

Republicans should embrace the possibility that Obamacare could pave the way toward lower health care entitlement spending overall. That won't be easy. But it's not unthinkable, either.

If we do nothing, as the Republicans suggest, we're going to see health care costs reach a point where small businesses can't afford it and families can't afford it. We're going to see people turned down from pre-existing conditions. We're going to find the Medicare doughnut hole - a gap in coverage that's going to hurt a lot of seniors.

In Pennsylvania, 38 percent of Pennsylvania seniors chose to get their Medicare from a plan called Medicare Advantage. It's their choice. Forty-seven percent of them are going to lose it under 'Obamacare' according to Medicare by 2017.

This drug coverage program was clearly designed by Republicans in Congress to serve the interests of the drug and insurance industries. America's seniors were an afterthought.

In 2005, Republicans passed a 360-page reconciliation bill without a single Democratic vote that provided deep cuts to Medicaid and raised premiums on Medicare beneficiaries.