Political Quotes

“Yes. I finally am going to be able to take care of it. So a couple of things I want to reiterate that I think are just myths. One, I already said that we already means-test Medicare. Number two, that raising the age of eligibility--and our Democratic leader wrote on December 11 the ``Truth About Medicare Age.'' She wrote an excellent USA Today article. And in it she says: As one expert, Paul N. Van de Water of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, has noted, raising the age `would not only fail to constrain health care costs across the economy, it would increase them.' And our leader points out that the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that higher State and private sector costs that result from raising the age would be twice as large as the total Federal savings. So we aren't even doing ourselves a favor when it comes to expenditures, the cost of health care, if we raise the age. It's, as you said, a really bad idea. Another thing, I do think that a lot of people, especially younger people, do think that once you get to 65 you just get this health care benefit without realizing that it is an insurance policy that seniors are paying dearly for. It is a good insurance policy, Medicare. In fact, it is far more efficient, with an overhead of about 3 percent, compared to private insurance, which can have as much as, well, you would know better, it is reaching up into 20 percent overhead costs. So Medicare works very well. And it's popular for very good, good reasons.…”