Claire McCaskill

As Senator Claire McCaskill said in that hearing, it is just math.

It seems to me that the institution is being stubbornly stuck in the status quo.

You are spending $7 billion, and 95 percent of that money is being spent on non-violent offenders.

I do not understand how we are turning down 784 of 855 applicants for a pilot program.

I begged the Federal Government to participate in our drug court program. Did not want to hear a word about it.

I do not think people realize that the Federal law enforcement system was not designed or ever intended to address what most people think of as crime in this country.

How close are you to actually getting more compensation for having succeeded in bringing down costs?

There were a lot of things that were upsetting about the Affordable Care Act, and one of them is what you said, Mr. Sergent.

The quality of life is really important, and it is really, if we look at it as a quality of care issue, you know, rather than just a cost issue or a pulling the plug issue.

And you spent how much?

We have got to keep investing in NIH. It is important in St. Louis for Washington University, but it is important in the whole country.

What we are saying is we have got to make sure that you really deserve a nurse at home, but we do not need to make sure you can walk in any ER in America.

What steps do you think are being taken to make sure that what you are learning about Mrs. Green and what you are learning about the other patients in terms of this system--how is CMS doing?

So, you know... That seems backward to me, I mean, not that we want to ever have anybody have to qualify for the emergency room.

We have had enough of proposals to cut benefits, raise the age, privatize the program.

Seniors understand Medicare is vital to living in dignity throughout their retirement years.

I think now it is time for us to look at how we can strengthen the program and make sure we preserve the program for the next 50 years.

We are now losing more young people to heroin addiction than we are to car crashes.

Do we not have a critical shortage of gerontologists?

What is more important is not the decision about when to pull the plug but providing services that help people live a reasonable life at the end of their life.

You had 100. In the Congress before that, you had 100 percent.

I joked one day that they have been saying, 'repeal and replace' for five years. I am going to get some bloodhounds and I am going to go through the halls of Congress looking for replace.

Why is it extraordinarily expensive?

One of the biggest health threats in the Midwest right now is heroin, and that is a direct consequence of opioids being prescribed.

Yes, and that is one thing we are going to do an investigation on, both in the Aging Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, looking at mergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceutical area and what that has done to the…