Paul Tonko: “Very well said, Representative Courtney. What I think upsets all three of us is the fact that, with the Affordable Care…”

“Very well said, Representative Courtney. What I think upsets all three of us is the fact that, with the Affordable Care Act, where we found savings by reining in some of the profit margins of insurance companies that were used--those savings were used to fill the doughnut hole that you just talked about--they're now taking those savings and sharing them in a way that's not going to benefit seniors, and they're not going to fill that doughnut hole. So when seniors come to us and say, Look, what is this talk about Medicare? they're saying, You destroyed Medicare. No. We were working to make it stronger. We're working to fill the doughnut hole so that prescription costs that are impacting seniors--my gosh, with the passage of time, we have seen advancements in pharmaceutical research that provides more opportunity for wellness or for cure. That has stretched opportunities galore for our seniors. But they would raid those savings and pull them away again from our senior community and use those in other ways, which we find very offensive. This ending of Medicare with this third vote tonight, how much more do we need to challenge the security of seniors out there? They're disturbed every time they hear of this effort to end Medicare. We want to make it stronger. We're talking about all sorts of efforts to bulk purchase pharmaceuticals for the Medicare program, which would make it stronger.…”