Paul Tonko: “Congresswoman Edwards and Congresswoman Jackson Lee, I would say, too, that Medicare, yes, speaks to the health care…”

“Congresswoman Edwards and Congresswoman Jackson Lee, I would say, too, that Medicare, yes, speaks to the health care needs of senior households, but there's also a stability there. There's a security so that some of the available expenditures that are out there today from seniors investing in their community, spending in their community, would be lost. And so the economic recovery, then, again, gets threatened. And when I look at this, all through that blob of color of which you speak, all during that time was like a loss of 8.2 million jobs. So where was the quantifiable benefit of all of this relief to those perched way high on the income ladder? There wasn't a corresponding benefit. So we need to recognize what works and works well. And when Medicare has worked for all these years, why would we threaten it? And what I think bothers me most--I'm on the Budget Committee, and today we had a hearing with Secretary Sebelius. And when you talk about bending that health care cost curve, the Republican plan, after they end Medicare and they toss it to the market for the shopping to be done by our senior community, there's no bending of the cost curve. They're saying sharpen the pencil, bottom-line benefit through competition to help our seniors. We have watched, Representative Jackson Lee, since the start of Medicare the private sector insurance costs have risen by over 5,000 percent, that's 5,000 percent.…”