Political Quotes

“I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, our idea for Medicare for the future is to make it better, not to eliminate it. In the Affordable Care Act, we provide help for seniors to pay for their prescription drugs, especially when they're in the doughnut hole. We provide money so they will be sure to have preventive services without having to pay for them so that we know we can prevent diseases that we otherwise have to pay to treat. We have extended the life of the Medicare trust fund. We're always looking for ways to hold down costs in a reasonable, rational way. One of the reasons we have very high costs in Medicare is, when a doctor and a patient get together, the doctor decides on how many services are going to be paid for, especially when that doctor gets paid more money for more services. Therefore, we've got to look for alternatives to that. Now I have a feeling the doctors like the idea of deciding how many services are going to be paid for, but we just can't afford that. So we have ways to hold down health care costs by trying to bring people together in affordable care organizations, ways for doctors to manage the care from physician to physician in a more efficient way, and we have a backup if these other things don't work--to have an advisory committee to give us their ideas; but their ideas cannot lead to rationing health care or making people have to pay more money for their insurance or to restrict benefits or modify eligibility.…”