Deborah Koff Ross: “for the next hour I plan to visit with the Members of the United States House of Representatives, and other Members will…”

“for the next hour I plan to visit with the Members of the United States House of Representatives, and other Members will be joining me throughout this hour, to talk about the need to truly modernize Medicare, to include medicine for our seniors. This is something that both parties have talked a lot about. They have talked about it for years. Yet we continue to live in a society where today's Medicare, if you really stop and think about it, is designed for yesterday's medical care. What I mean by that is I recently encountered an elderly woman in Glenwood, Arkansas, in my congressional district who is a retired pharmacist who just happened to have been a relief pharmacist at the pharmacy that my family used in Prescott, Arkansas, when I was a small child growing up there. She talked about how if she filled a prescription and it cost more than $5, she would go ahead and fill the next prescription while she tried to build up enough courage and confidence to go out and tell the patient that their medicine was going to cost $5. My, my, how times have changed. How times have changed and indeed today's Medicare really is designed for yesterday's medical care. I have stepped across the aisle and voted with my Republican Members probably as many times as any Democrat in this Chamber.”