mr. chairman , i thank the gentleman for yielding me this time . 
i rise in strong opposition to this amendment , although i appreciate the concern of the gentleman from california ( mr. filner ) xz4001330 . 
first of all , we all know how important medicare is to our seniors . 
two hundred thousand new beneficiaries sign up every month , and anything that would disrupt their entry up into the system would be a terrible hardship to impose on our seniors . 
this amendment would actually interfere with the operation of the current system before a new system could be put in place , causing serious disruption in the medicare program in the enrollment process for new beneficiaries . 
that much said , cms does share the gentleman 's concern and is in the process of examining this issue . 
that project is currently in the information-gathering phase , focusing on identifying all of the systems and entities and understanding the nature of the transactions that rely on a beneficiary identifier . 
there are many parties involved , with a variety of information claims processing and data exchange systems , and once they get this base research done , they can move forward on reforming the use of the social security system . 
i would tell the members that in the new drug plan they do not use the social security identifier . 
so i would urge the gentleman to maintain his interest in this subject to work with the committee as we oversee cms 's gathering of this material and evaluation of this problem ; and the fact that they have managed to develop the drug plan without using a social security identifier indicates to us that they will take the time and invest the resources to change the base underlying system . 
but any radical change to that system will deny current beneficiaries coming into the system , month by month , their benefits . 
