Political Quotes

“as I have said, I intend to come to the Senate floor each day this week part of an effort to help build bipartisan support in this body for Medicare reform. Not via an independent commission. Not in the next Congress. But now, and by us, the Members of the 105th Congress. I think we have an historic opportunity to transform Medicare from a 30-year-old, tin-Lizzie style social welfare program into a 21st century, comprehensive seniors health care system that is humane, cost-efficient and sustainable. The reformed Medicare Program I envision, and which I think is within our grasp, is a health plan that is about choice, quality and access, and also about the efficiencies that characterize much of the Nation's private health care marketplace. But changing Medicare will require tough decisions, tough votes and, as in turning a battleship in mid-ocean, a good deal of time and patience on the part of beneficiaries and health care providers. We must start by making the right moves, the right changes, today, before some 75 million baby boom generation retirees begin swamping the Medicare Program in 2013. In my private conversations with colleagues, I've been arguing that this is the classic pay-me-now, or pay-me-later situation. Structural changes enacted in the next year or two will not be easy. But in the face of what Congress would have to overcome beginning early in the next century, these changes will seem like child's play.”