Political Quotes

“Mr. President, while the Senator from Massachusetts is still with us on the floor and in other ways as well, I just want to say a couple of things. One, good for the Senator. He just said a mouthful, and he said what needs to be said. What he said is that there is not just one or two choices. Somebody said to me yesterday: Well, it is a choice between either a single-payer or Graham-Cassidy. Those are our choices. Uh-uh. No. No. I think a far better choice for us to take is in the example of leadership set by Senators Alexander and Murray on the Committee of Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. As the Presiding Officer knows, in a span of 2 weeks, they held four bipartisan roundtables with Governors from all over the country, insurance commissioners from all over the country, healthcare providers, insurance, and health economists to ask: What should we do? What should we do right now in our being faced with the challenge and maybe the possibility of repealing the Affordable Care Act? What should we do? They all said the same thing--stabilize the exchanges. Every State has a health insurance exchange, an individual marketplace. Stabilize them. They all basically said to do mainly three or four things to stabilize them: No. 1, make clear that these cost-sharing subsidies, which help lower income people in the exchanges with their copays and deductibles, are not going away. Make it clear that they are going to be around for at least a couple of years. No.…”