I just think basically we use the term all across the senior spectrum.

I'm very appreciative that the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Herb Kohl from Wisconsin, has loaned me his gavel to bring the focus of this panel back home to Colorado.

I think that you're right, that the baby-boomer generation has an opportunity to give back to a very rich back nine of life, if you will.

One of the interesting developments, although it's not reached the level of large-scale development, is some seniors moving to towns east of Denver because they're safe communities.

Any other members of the panel want to comment on this dual cohort dynamic where we have parents of seniors who are part of the OAA needs?

It's imperative to be successful in delivering services to seniors that those systems work together.

I do not like the phrase and it's coined from the sense that the resources that we will need will be this huge burden that will engulf us as we address the needs of the baby-boomers.

That term is useful, all ages in the senior spectrum. That's an important way to put it.

I think that we all agree as Americans there's a value that every one of us has a contribution to make throughout our lives and we would also, I think, agree that you measure society by how it treats its least fortunate and most vulnerable…

I know history, I'm going to editorialize here, history will show what the Congress did over this last year in broadening coverage, including every American, in our healthcare system with the intent of maintaining quality and driving down…

He was quite an American.

I had a big one in Durango that went very well, given there were only 18 state troopers, sheriff deputies and multiple police there to protect me and everybody else from themselves.

part of the idea was driven by a man who represented a very rural state, the state of Idaho

If I might, too, respond to the gentleman's initial question, in the Affordable Care Act, there is a provision which was based on a piece of legislation I introduced called the Rural Physicians Pipeline Act.

It's an important acknowledgement to make but it's a problem I'd rather have because what we're doing in providing care for all Americans is the smart and the right and the moral thing to do.

One of the most important elements that sometimes isn't acknowledged, particularly by critics of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, ... is that because of those landmark programs our generation has known that our parents will be…

At some point we'll be gone and you'll have America all to yourselves, but in the meantime we are quite a cohort.

I want to welcome all of you in the audience. We're going to have a very informative hearing, of that I have no doubt.