Political Quotes

“I rise today representing the second largest district geographically in the Nation in the House, other than the five States that are only single-Member States, so I know something about rural health care. I spent 5 years on a community hospital board. I am still a private employer, so I see that side of health insurance. My in-laws are retired and face this battle about lack of medical prescription drug coverage under Medicare. My parents battled that until their death. They paid for their own prescription drugs out of their own pocket. The issue that we are trying to resolve here in this Congress is for the first time in 40 years expanding Medicare so that seniors can have access to affordable prescription drugs. It is not easy to do. It is not simple to do. It is very difficult to do, to get it right. But I think we are very, very close in getting it right this time. We have passed the biggest rural health care package probably in the history of this House. We are adding $25 billion in additional rural health care for the country in addition to what we already spend, $25 billion over 10 years, for some very good provisions. In the committee I supported increasing the access to rural home health care, a 5 percent increase in payments. I have supported efforts to add additional funding for physicians to locate in remote and underserved areas in rural communities.”