Trent Lott: “I thank Senator Frist for the good work that he does on behalf of his constituents but also the entire Senate. He is the…”

“I thank Senator Frist for the good work that he does on behalf of his constituents but also the entire Senate. He is the only doctor we have in the Senate, a very outstanding heart surgeon. He did quite an outstanding number of things before he ran for the Senate, the first time he had ever run for office, and he has become a very valuable Member of this body. When he talks about health care, health care delivery, he has seen it as a doctor; he has seen it from the standpoint of the patients with whom he has had to deal. He has seen it from the standpoint of what hospitals do or can't do. He has seen unbelievably magnificent technological medical advances that have allowed our people to live longer and have a better quality of life. He knows about heart, lung, and liver transplants. It is a miracle. We want to continue to improve health care in America. I think we have to recognize that it is changing so fast, we have so many people living so much longer with different kinds of needs, we have to be flexible and we have to make changes. He also understands that we could kill the goose that laid the golden egg. We still are blessed in this country to have the best health care, the most sophisticated, technologically advanced health care the minds of men have ever conceived in the history of the world. And we want to make sure that we protect that, preserve it, and make it better. A good way to begin to kill it is to turn it over to the Federal Government.”