Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I am going to be starting this hour on behalf of my colleagues from the GOP Doctors Caucus. Congressmen and Drs. Murphy and Gingrey are our two cochairmen. We make up a group of 10 M.D.s and 4 other professional health care workers, including a dentist, a psychologist, an optometrist. We have been meeting on a very regular basis throughout this debate. Perhaps this weekend we will have a culmination of quite a debate. And what a debate it has been all year. As I tell folks often, I ran in my election in 2008, my first election, on health care reform. I am a physician, a family physician of 30 years. I have enjoyed the practice of medicine. I still practice medicine when I go back to my district. And for this 30-year period I have learned a lot about the economics of health care, things that are so important. I have been through all phases. In the early days of Medicare, when we didn't have a lot of the restrictions and restraints that we have today; during the HMO days, where we had capitated care and the so-called gatekeeper; during the days when the CLIA laws came out that more or less outlawed laboratories for doctors' offices; of course the SGR days, sustained growth rate that we have been dealing with for the last 10 years. I have seen it all, and so have my colleagues. In fact, among us we have over 400 years of clinical experience. I would include our two physicians from the Senate in that group.…”