Political Quotes

“I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy in permitting me to speak on this. It is not quite as simple as my friend from Florida implies. Today we are voting to upend the healthcare system and interrupt patient care. Ending the public health emergency prematurely would have far-reaching implications, and this is a waste of time. The Biden administration has already made clear that they are planning on ending the emergency in May. Why are we spending time abruptly ending this declaration, which is going to end in 3 months anyway, when we could have instead had a serious conversation about making this as smooth a transition as possible? There are many things that are involved here. Congress already started this work in the omnibus by beginning a process to wind down Medicaid enrollment policies and extending important programs like telehealth. I was happy that my bipartisan legislation to extend Medicare's Hospital at Home program was extended in this manner. We fought for this because we viewed the waivers and policies of the last 3 years as a blueprint for future opportunities to innovate and extract value from our healthcare system. This work was bipartisan because both sides of the aisle saw the benefit of the pandemic-era policies. It is unfortunate that instead of continuing to build on that work, my colleagues are posturing.…”