On the recordMarch 18, 2010
I will conclude by saying, absolutely yes. This is one of the good ideas Republicans had. Rather than creating a new entitlement, taking money from Medicare to fund that new entitlement, the savings we believe we can achieve in Medicare should be applied to keeping Medicare solvent for another 17 years or whatever amount of time this money could provide. Then, if we are going to expend money, let's use it to pay the hard-working physicians and all the other providers, the RNs, the folks in the hospitals, and everybody else whom we want there to take care of us when we get sick. Let's make sure that money is available there and that we have some kind of permanent resolution of this problem so we do not have to come back and try to fix it every year. Those are just some of the things we believe should be done rather than to scrap the whole system we have, replace it with this new government-operated behemoth that takes over this big section of our economy, pushes government bureaucrats between patients and their physicians and ends up providing enormous new taxes, without cutting the premiums--in fact, allowing premiums to go up even more than they would have otherwise. Other than that, it is a nifty idea. Of course, I am being facetious. The health care bill, in my opinion, is not a good idea.
