David Thomas: “reclaiming my time, it sounds to me the gentleman is offering the classic argument of because it is not perfect, it…”

“reclaiming my time, it sounds to me the gentleman is offering the classic argument of because it is not perfect, it should be opposed. It seems to me that if there is an ability to correct a mistake and that the administration simply wants legal protection to correct that mistake, that we ought to be able to do that. If the gentleman says others are not being provided for adequately, I would be the first to agree with the gentleman; and that is the first order of business. But no one else can be taken care of unless we go through those weeks and months of negotiations of what a package should look like. So I would simply say, in returning my time to the gentleman who was kind enough to yield it to me, if in fact using real-world numbers and providing the administration some legal protection from being sued because they did not do something else other than putting in real-world numbers is going to be something that someone opposes, it is amazing the point that we have come to. If others could be resolved this way, we would be doing others. Just because this particular problem could be resolved and others cannot does not mean that one should be in opposition to resolving this particular problem. We will deal with the others when it is timely and appropriate, because we will have to negotiate and put dollars on the table to solve other providers' problems.”