Political Quotes

“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.”