Political Quotes

“Madam President, this past Saturday, open enrollment began for the second round of State-based and Federal exchanges all across the country. We can think about where we were a year ago today: The government was in shutdown. The Federal Web page where people went to enroll was a blank screen for many. There was frustration all across the country, and a lot of our friends on the other side of the aisle were claiming that this was proof the health care reform law could not work. They claimed it was a failure from the beginning. Well, a year makes a big difference. It is a year later, and we have 7 million, 8 million people who have insurance on these exchanges across the country. We have lowered the number of people without insurance by 25 percent in a year's period of time. That is remarkable. In my State of Connecticut, where we run the best exchange in the entire country, we have cut the number of uninsured in half in just a year's period of time. That is an even more stunning number. Health care rates of inflation are as low as they have been in most of our lifetimes. The State of Connecticut is actually spending less on Medicaid than it was a year or two ago, and quality is getting better. By most all of the indices that we follow, the number of people who are readmitted to a hospital after a surgery or the number of infections people get while they are in the hospital are all lower than they were when the bill first went into effect.…”