Political Quotes

“I wish to speak about a bill I plan to introduce in a few moments, and hopefully we will have a chance or an opportunity in the future to debate it because it is a very important fix, if you will, to the Affordable Care Act. We debated this bill for literally years--months in committee for hours and hours, in daylight and during the evening sessions. There were hundreds of amendments. This bill was built with Democratic input and support and Republican input. The Republicans did not vote for the bill, but they most certainly had a tremendous amount of impact in the amendment process. Building a new health care system for this Nation has been very difficult, but it holds a great deal of promise. The Affordable Care Act--and the easiest way to explain it--was somewhere between what some people on the left wanted, which was a government-run system, something like Medicare for all--it is appealing, but it is very expensive. We couldn't figure out a cost-effective way to provide that. Members on the right, the more conservative-leaning in this body, wanted to provide savings accounts. This works beautifully for people who have money to save in the account, but people who live paycheck to paycheck and have no money to save would never get any account to be able to provide for their health insurance. Between those two bookends, we debated for a long time about how to provide a market-based approach to insurance. No nation in the world has attempted this.…”