Political Quotes

“Mr. Courtney, thank you for pointing out that very, very important fact that seems to have been totally overlooked in today's debate, at least by our Republican colleagues. There is another factor here, and that is that Medicare, like all medical services across the United States, whether you are in Kaiser or in Blue Cross, Anthem or Medicare--all of these programs are carried along on the inflationary wave in health care, which actually runs two or three times the general inflation of our economy. So health care is growing very, very rapidly overall. It turns out that the inflation rate in Medicare is about one half the inflation rate in the general health care system. Now, if Medicare is part of the health care system and takes care of the most expensive part of the population, how is it that Medicare is not inflating--the costs are not going up--as fast as the costs are in the private health insurance sector? The reason is, as I discussed before, Medicare is very efficient. It is a very, very efficient program: a universal benefit across the Nation, uniform; clear deductibles, clear co-pays; and in Medicare part B, cost sharing. All of that is there and it's understood. The private insurance has 1,000 different policies--chaos throughout the marketplace. Now, we've talked about this a little bit.…”