Political Quotes

“Mr. Altmire, thank you very much for moving this issue along. I've used this placard before when we were discussing the Republican budget that did pass this House that would end Medicare as we know it. That was just a way of doing it with vouchers or with what they call premium support. Either way, Medicare as a guarantee of health care for those people 65 and over would be over. Now, there are other ways that Medicare can be whittled away, weakened to the point where it could simply die of malnutrition. We want to be quite certain that this doesn't happen and that this tombstone never comes to pass. It was 1965 that President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into existence, and we're not going to let it end in 2011 or 2012 or beyond. I recall so vividly an experience as a child, I was probably, I don't know, 10, 12 years old. My father took me to the county hospital, which is where the elderly went to die. There was no Medicare then. It didn't exist. More than half of the seniors were in poverty. There was no health care available to them. No insurance company would insure the elderly. They were expensive. And so there was literally no way that they would be able to get health care except at the county hospital, a ward strung out as far as my eye could see, beds on both sides, the stench unbelievable. The moaning and the crying that was going on unbelievable. In 1965, America took a step to become a compassionate Nation where we would take care of the elderly.…”