Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator from Oregon for bringing us here today. Mr. President, 53 years ago this week, President Johnson signed the Medicare bill. I believe it to be one of the most important pieces of legislation signed in the last 100 years. It finally removed from the shoulders of the senior citizens of this country the burden, stress, cost, and anxiety of not knowing whether they were going to be able to pay for healthcare, for hospitalization, for doctors' visits, and, later, for prescription drugs. I will talk for a moment about two things. No. 1 is what it has done to our economy and, particularly, to the economy involving seniors. Here is a pretty graphic representation. In 1965, when Medicare was passed, a third of the senior citizens in the country lived in poverty. One-third lived in poverty and in fear of losing everything if they were stricken by health catastrophes or even minor health problems that they could not deal with. Over the next 53 years, this line has come down to 9.3 percent of seniors living in poverty. It has declined by two-thirds, largely because of Medicare, largely because the financial burden of healthcare costs has been eliminated from their shoulders. Now, Medicare isn't perfect. There are things we can do to strengthen it, to improve it. I think one of the things we need to do is to talk about high drug prices and the effect on seniors under Medicare. We also have to talk about prevention.…”