Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Georgia, my colleague and physician. Let me say parenthetically here that what are some of the things that we in this Chamber, we Republicans from the Doc Caucus--which, by the way, is 23 strong, which includes three nurses, two dentists, and one psychologist. So what are some of the things that we agree on moving forward that we really need in terms of saving Medicare? Well, I can tell you one thing that everybody agrees on, and that is that we need robust competition among providers--doctors, hospitals, insurance companies. There is no reason why they shouldn't have to deal with the competition of market forces. And why? Because everything in America that we see improves improves because of the marketplace; that is that when you compete, it makes you work harder; it makes you try harder; it raises the level of effort; and, ultimately, you end up with better quality service products and you end up with lower cost to the consumer. We also agree that we want choices for Americans. Today, there are a lot of choices even for Medicare recipients that just aren't there, and we want that to occur. We also want to move away from a top-down bureaucratic system where, again, a 15-member appointed board of bureaucrats--nameless, faceless, unelectable, unaccountable people who are selected and who will not be there to answer your call. We all agree that that is not a good thing.…”