Jay Dickey: “I think I am going to introduce a new word to this thing, counter-consultants' advice. What we have here is we have…”

“I think I am going to introduce a new word to this thing, counter-consultants' advice. What we have here is we have consultants who are trying to take the Medicare issue and make it an issue of political proportions. Then the counter consultants come back and say, ``No, we can't do this. We have got to respond to this politically.'' We just have a contrast here with the previous speaker and myself. I think we all have something in common. I think we all agree, we all agree we must save Medicare. We all agree that if we continue like we are doing, with the overutilization and the rising costs, that Medicare is going to go broke. So what we need to do in this particular discussion is keep the consultants and the counter-consultants out of it. Look at the facts. In 2002, Medicare will go bankrupt, and $1 billion in Medicare part A will be spent over, above, what we have to spend. We need to save Medicare, and we all agree on that.”