Political Quotes

“The key point here is that in this legislation there is a specific effort to eliminate the fraud that goes on in the system. The unnecessary payments, the stealing of the Social Security cards, all those kinds of things that are out there, we know we need to deal with that. And we are dealing with it. Even before this piece of legislation, we put money into the budget to deal with that; and then this legislation strengthens that. And, in addition to that, we now will have better medical record technology which will also assist us in keeping track of what is going on. It is a small piece of a much, much larger piece of legislation that does help seniors in very, very specific ways. Why should the insurance companies get an unnecessary boost in their profits at the expense of the Medicare program? No reason that I know of. They should be competing and they should be helping seniors, but not get that additional bump. Those savings are also plowed back into the benefits for seniors so that they can have those programs that you talked about, those programs of prevention, of wellness, of being able to stay in their home. All of those things are important. If I could just take a personal moment for a moment. My mother phoned me; she is 87. She is going to have her 88th birthday. If it is 89, I am in deep trouble back home. But she is going to have her birthday soon. She phoned about 3 weeks ago and she said, John, why are you cutting the Medicare programs?…”