Pete Domenici: “But let me first say that whatever they said about the status of the way we through the Federal Government are funding…”

“But let me first say that whatever they said about the status of the way we through the Federal Government are funding medical doctors' education, both straight medical school and for specialties, whatever they said about how egregious it is, they are probably right. The point is that what they seek to do is not going to help a bit because what has actually happened is that we are paying for medical education out of the Medicare fund, and we have been doing it for a long time. That is sort of a way for you to fund medical education, and if nobody knows about it, it doesn't count very much because it is coming out of what was always a very big trust fund. As a consequence, medical education is costing a huge amount of money and the biggest player--so everybody will understand this issue of who is going to decide how many doctors we have, right now the biggest player is the Federal Government.”