Angus King

Fifteen percent is the gap?

Shame on us if we're not ready for it because it's totally predictable.

It would help if we had a budget, not a continuing resolution.

The best news I've heard so far is the expansion of the home-based care.

Certainly that's important. You have what amounts to a nursing home at Togus.

What should we be attending to in the next round of VA and veterans' legislation?

We've really got to work on that because it would be awful to have somebody who's ready, wants a mission, wants to do it but they can't wait for nine months or a year.

Every day that you delay a nursing-home placement, the veteran is happier and the taxpayers are happier.

Everything we talked about still comes back to workforce, doesn't it? Home-based care, respite care. It's all having the people.

I think that's something we have to figure out how to waive or something.

The cheapest health intervention is the one that doesn't happen.

Well, it seems to me that's an area that we should be talking about in Washington.

By the way, I got a great piece of advice. Someone asked Buckminster Fuller, the famous architect, for advice on how to live a long life. His answer was 'always use the bannister.'

I've told my staff I want to be the falls senator; without falling.

That's a big part of----

It would be nice to have WiFi in the CBOCs; [Laughter.] just saying.

If you can't--if you can't get enough people, you're not going to be able to meet the staffing ratios which could mean a loss of capacity rather than a gain for the veterans.

Well, I think that's--that's something that you're going to have to be thinking about because it ties back to the workforce problem.

Could you define expansion? Are we talking 20, 30 percent, 40 percent? I mean----

What can we do to expand and support home health services which I think everybody, including veterans, would prefer and really ramp that up.

We're not helping veterans if we have--if beds disappear.

My concern about that--and we'll talk to others about it--this is a rule that the--CMS is the federal agency, it's the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services.

And my problem with the regulation is it's the best being the enemy of the good because if the result is closed nursing homes and fewer beds, we haven't gained anything.

If we don't have the people to staff them, it ain't gonna work.

The truth is, the work just begins when the bill passes.