Political Quotes

“I mentioned before how the money that was going to the community health center in Long Branch, in my home town, was being used to coordinate with Monmouth Medical Center so that people didn't have to go to the emergency room. When they came once, they were put into a computer, and it was exactly the electronic system that you talked about. I went to Monmouth Medical Center one day because they had expanded their emergency room because they had so many people flooding the emergency room. Particularly in these tough economic times, a lot of people don't have health insurance, more and more people, so they had actually doubled, I think, the capacity of their emergency room. But they coordinated electronically with the community health center with this money that came in. So they showed me how a person would come in, and then they would be put into the system electronically with the community health center and they wouldn't come back to the emergency room. One of the big issues now across the country--in fact, I just did an opinion piece about it in my local newspaper, the Asbury Park Press--is how emergency rooms are being flooded with more and more patients because more and more people don't have insurance. So we have to figure out a way to deal with that. Obviously, the health care reform does that, because once everybody gets insurance, sees a doctor and gets primary care, you won't have the need for as many people to go to the emergency room.”