Political Quotes

“I rise today to express my dissatisfaction and disappointment over what is a life-and-death matter for many Americans. My disappointment is about the actions recently taken by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the action they took was reinstating the organ procurement organization LiveOnNY. I am a Kansan. This is not an organization that is located in my State, but this decision by CMS, when combined with recent policy changes from the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network, misses the mark, and it misses it widely. We should be improving the organ procurement process and increasing the number of available organs for transplant rather than expanding the distance organs travel and moving additional organs from high donation areas to low donation areas. CMS' recent decision to renew this contract, which was initially meant to be canceled due to years of poor performance, is troublesome. This organization was the only organization out of the 58 organ procurement organizations to have a contract canceled for poor performance, which was only done after numerous reprimands and penalties that failed to lead to improvement. Conversely, it was reassuring that CMS was finally going to take some responsibility toward ensuring that donor organizations are adequately performing their jobs and protecting patients.…”