Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee for working with Senator McCain to get a bill. I support Senator Sessions and the budget points of order on this bill. I take exception to some of the statements by my colleague from Vermont. As reported yesterday, if you look at the patient list for many of the primary care doctors in the VA, they are half of what the average practicing physician outside the VA is. When you drill down on those, many of them have patients that have been deceased for years. About 10 to 15 percent of their patient list has never been to the VA, or they came once from a different State or were transferred from somewhere else. What you actually see is the patient load in the private sector is about 2\1/2\ times what the patient load is in the VA. I have no doubt we need to increase the number of physicians in the VA, but we also need to increase markedly the amount of output that those physicians perform. The other thing that is important in this bill is the transparency-- which I don't believe has been mentioned--that will actually allow veterans to know the quality outcomes of where they are being treated and the credentials of those who are treating them. Those are important factors for care. Our veterans deserve the best care. I agree with the chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee that the vast majority of our VA employees are hard-working employees, but there are some who aren't.…”