Sam Gibbons: “I am just incredulously mystified by the arguments I hear here. As the gentleman from California said, I attended these…”

“I am just incredulously mystified by the arguments I hear here. As the gentleman from California said, I attended these meetings, even though I am not a member of the subcommittee. They were pabulum hearings. They had nothing to do with the meat of the program. They were just people making suggestions or complaining. But nobody yet has seen a plan. And when that plan comes out, it is going to be not just 1 page of paper, but it is going to be 400 or 500 pages of paper, crammed with details. This is a very complex program. It is more than just medical care for the aged. It is medical care for all of the disabled in the United States, it is medical care for all of the kidney failure patients in the United States, it is all long-term care for aged people or for disabled people. It is medical education. I do not know what can be more important than training doctors, and the Medicare Program trains them. There that is where the money comes from. What about all of the hospitals that take care of all of these indigent people that do not have any money? That is where Medicare money is spent. We know nothing of what they plan to do in all of this program. They have never mentioned the first line of it.”