Political Quotes

“Let me respond briefly to some of the comments made by my colleague from New Hampshire. This is the same tired old rhetoric the HMOs have been trotting out for years now to keep any kind of reform from occurring. They are now, by the way, spending many millions of dollars on lobbyists and public relations campaigns, and on television, to try to defeat any kind of reform. These are the same arguments we have heard before. We need to get past that. We need to get to talking about providing real protections and real rights for patients. That is what Senator McCain and I did. We worked for many months on this legislation to address many of the issues about which my colleague has just talked but nothing ever changes. No matter what we bring to this Chamber by way of patient protection, we hear these same arguments made. Let me speak to just a couple of those arguments briefly. First, on the issue of forum shopping, cases going to State court, I say to my colleague from New Hampshire, he should see what the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, by way of the Judicial Conference of the United States, which the Chief Justice heads, said about this issue.”