Political Quotes

“Well, again, I would add that I was a health care provider, but I was also a small business person in the sense that we had about 85 employees that we had to meet payroll with. And always our biggest cost of doing business, our biggest expense was health care insurance for our employees. Every year the guys would come along and they would say, well, your premium is going up 10, 15, 20 percent, whatever it is. The major problem that we have going on right now is increased cost. And as was discussed earlier by my colleague, you know, things like health savings accounts, those are free market reforms. It is a free market reform that lowers cost. Associated health plans, allowing my barber with his two or three employees to team with maybe thousands of barbers to get a much lower rate. And then lastly, controlling the nuisance lawsuits. Those are free market reforms that would lower costs, which we desperately need. The problem is--and again, I don't know who the President is listening to--but those types of things are not included in the bill that we see. The only thing I would say though is, instead, there is no control of cost, and what we have is in the fine-print wage and price controls that they're just saying, well, we are going to dictate the cost. And again, as my colleague said earlier, that just doesn't work. That has been proven with several administrations in the past that it is going to lead to rationing and decreased quality of care. I yield to you.”