Tom Price: “today we will take up the Medicare prescription drug program, a program where costs were $13 billion lower than…”

“today we will take up the Medicare prescription drug program, a program where costs were $13 billion lower than projected in 2006; needed life-saving drugs are available; and 80 percent of the beneficiaries are supportive and satisfied with the program. So what problems are the Democrats trying to solve? Theirs is really a solution in search of a problem. The Democrats think that Washington can make better decisions than the American people about very personal medical matters. And what happens when the government gets more involved? Things become more bureaucratic and more expensive. As a physician, I know how difficult it is to take care of patients, oftentimes because so many non-medical people are making medical decisions. If H.R. 4 is adopted and becomes law, Washington bureaucrats will decide which drugs will be available for patients, not from a scientific or safety standpoint but purely based upon money. That is not the way we ought to be making health care decisions. Those decisions ought to be made by patients and doctors.”