David Thomas: “What is especially of concern to me about now, apparently the news media's understanding that the Vice President…”

“What is especially of concern to me about now, apparently the news media's understanding that the Vice President manufactured some facts to try to make his point is that there is a lot of reality out there that is better than made-up stories. What concerns me is that he knowingly made that story up. And I happen to personally believe that there are some of the Members in this body who have made up fictions about the plan that passed the House because they would rather have the issue than the solution. That is just to me reprehensible, when we could have already provided prescription drugs for seniors in Medicare. It should not be part of a presidential debate. It should be part of the law. We are doing everything we can to make that happen, including create a bipartisan plan that passed the House when those Democratic leaders who wanted to make it an issue walked out of this body rather than engaging in an honest, direct debate about the flexibility of our plan versus the rigidness of theirs, the integration of the plan rather than theirs as an add-on, and probably, most important, the fact that we provide the drugs that your doctor believes you need, not a bureaucratic structure that may not provide that particular drug but will force you to an alternative. That is not the kind of choice that we believe seniors and their doctors ought to make.”