Political Quotes

“Finally, my first elected job, many years ago, was to an organization called the Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital. It was the largest hospital in the State. It was the largest hospital district. People ran at-large from Clark County, the Las Vegas area, and I was elected to that. It was my first elected job. When I took that job, there was no Medicare. In that hospital, when someone came who was old and did not have money, someone had to sign for them--a husband, a wife, father, mother, brother, sister, neighbor; someone signed. If that person did not pay after agreeing to pay, we had a large collection agency and we would go after those people. It was very difficult sometimes to collect that money, difficult in the sense it was hard to do, but, more importantly, it was difficult to do because you hated to go after people to pay these large hospital and doctor bills. Medicare came into being before I left my job. It changed. Prior to Medicare, 40 percent of the seniors who came into that hospital had no insurance, and that is where they had to look to their friends and neighbors and relatives to take care of that bill. Today, after Medicare is the law of the land, virtually every senior citizen has the ability to go into a hospital anyplace in America. For all of these many years, going on five decades, Medicare has been improving and extending the lives of seniors.…”