Political Quotes

“in that letter, we expressed our strong opposition to this ideological venture. It is important to know that significant changes were made to transform the full-scale national premium support proposal into a limited bone fide demonstration project. That is important to know. I have it here on the chart. I hope it is something I can get back to on Monday. It is important to know how far we have come from where it was. The open-ended privatization of the Medicare Program, starting in 2010, would have been a wholesale privatization which didn't offer any seniors any protection, regardless if they were low income, from premium fluctuations. Because it would open it up to competition in the private sector, the conferees shifted it to a bone fide limited demonstration project. We moved from that open-ended privatization to the first proposal in the conference report which provided protection for low-income seniors for any type of open-ended privatization. They also moved to a demonstration project so it wouldn't be national--it wouldn't be permanent for one region in four metropolitan statistical areas. We said that is not enough; that is too open ended. We finally were able to reduce it to six MSAs with limited criteria. That limited the number of people who would participate in those six metropolitan areas.”