Phil Gingrey: “Dr. Murphy, thank you so much and thank you for starting this Special Hour and allowing me to get over, as we have a…”

“Dr. Murphy, thank you so much and thank you for starting this Special Hour and allowing me to get over, as we have a great line- up of members, I think five members, of the Republican Healthcare Public Affairs Team that we formed, with Dr. Murphy and I cochairing that subcommittee of the Republican Conference at the beginning of this 109th Congress. We have been talking about a number of issues during the past year relating to health care, the Medicare Modernization Act, Prescription Drug part D, tort reform, which we passed in this House many times and are still laboring to finally get that into law. But this gives us, really, a great opportunity to follow on to what our President said in the 2006 State of the Union address in regard to health care. Now, he did not spend a lot of time on health care, but what he said in just a couple of pages was significantly an important part of his address to the Nation. This Presidency and this Republican majority are fully, fully committed to making sure that we bring health care into the 21st century and we continue to maintain the edge that we have in regard to health care. But we are not going to maintain that edge if we continue to use a 20th-century model. It is just like the radio and the television set and the computer. We have to do this. We absolutely have to do it. Dr.…”