Political Quotes

“I thank the Chair. Senator Wyden, in an effort to try to accommodate everyone here, said, OK, we will take the cost savings that are already in the House bill--I could argue that really has nothing to do with the physician problem, but it is one I think we could agree on so we have real cost savings of over $20 billion that Senator Wyden has put in this bill. He said, we have these scored savings under the contingency operations; let's use that if people feel we have to have an offset, even though we have already paid for it over and over again. So we have two options: Another temporary fix with continuing uncertainty, continuing this problem down the road, asking those who didn't cause it to pay for it, even though it has already been paid for before or we could really take care of it and tell our medical community: Let's work on other issues to improve our health care system rather than coming here every year and asking for a temporary extension of the Medicare physician reimbursement structure and not allowing the SGR system to take effect. Those are the two options we have. So I come here to thank Senator Wyden for putting forward a proposal that would fix it, that would really do it, so we wouldn't have to come back again next year, so Congress could really get something done. It is bipartisan, bicameral. The fix has already been signed off by the House and the Senate. Senator Wyden has come up with a plan that allows us to be fiscally responsible.…”