Richard Burr: “another important thing: we save money, and there is no figure in there on the quality of life improvement that we have…”

“another important thing: we save money, and there is no figure in there on the quality of life improvement that we have made for the individuals. No hospital stay, no transportation for relatives, the type of thing that for seniors today is a problem; just the dislocation from their home is a problem. We have been joined by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), who also participated in quite a few things with us, and one of them was the expansion of Medicare in 1995, if I remember, when we made the sell that there were certain things under Medicare that we ought to cover, such as the PSA exam for senior males that checked for a certain cancer; mammograms for senior females so that we could detect at an earlier stage; not too dissimilar to the argument that the gentleman just made and that is if we find a way to detect things sooner, the faster we do it, the faster we treat, the less hospital stay that we have, the less cost that we have, a better quality of life that we have. Everything that we would chart as a goal in a health care plan we were able to achieve, and it should be incorporated into this drug benefit.”