Political Quotes

“Mr. President, what needs to be fixed in this bill is a whole lot more than that, but this is a great attempt to try to solve a problem. Let me describe a scenario, what is getting ready to happen. Every State is cutting Medicaid reimbursement. We are going to add 16 million people to Medicaid. We cannot get them all seen now. Then we have a doctor cut that is coming to 21 percent for people who are under Medicare. What is going to happen? What do you think the average physician in this country is going to do? I can tell you that they are going to do three things: Fewer will see Medicaid patients so there will be fewer doctors taking Medicaid at the time we increase the enrollment by 50 percent. That is No. 1. No. 2, fewer doctors are going to take Medicare as we have this ballooning increase of baby boomers going into Medicare. No. 3--and this is probably more important than anything--we are going to see a large percentage of doctors, with this bill passed with no continuity as to how they are ever going to get funded under Medicare, quit. They are going to quit. They can take their training, their effort, their education and knowledge and apply it in some other field of endeavor and not have to live with the hassle of a 21-percent cut hanging over their head. Even if we fix it for 3 years, 3 years from now the same problem is going to come up, except it is going to be worse. So there is no fix in it.…”