Political Quotes

“I thank the Speaker for this opportunity to continue the discussion. My colleague from Texas really left here a moment ago with a plea about bringing down the cost of health care in America. Actually, it was the cost of premiums in America. That is a plea that I think all 435 of us would echo. It would certainly be our goal, as representatives of the American people, to find some way to accomplish that, some way to bring down the cost of premiums. I would like just to make a point right at the outset. When discussing health care, there are really two connected, but very separate, parts to the healthcare system. One part is the delivery of medical services. These are the doctors, some of whom are in organizations of doctors of various specialties. Some are in large practices, such as the Kaiser practice. Some are in hospitals disconnected from doctors. But there is just a plethora of different ways in which medical services are delivered. That is the delivery of medical services. That is one part of it. The other part of the healthcare system in America, and really anywhere in the world, is the collection of money to pay for the services. Now, in the United States, we have many different ways to collect the money. One of them is through taxes. And this is how we pay for Medicare and Medicaid, what we call MediCal in California.…”