Political Quotes

“I want to pick up on another aspect of what both the Senator from Virginia and the Senator from Oklahoma have talked about, and that is that at this rate we have to be concerned that after patch 17 there will be patch 18, and after 18 there will be patch 19. I am sure there are some young people up in the galleries who are light years away from Medicare. In fact, the distinguished Presiding Officer of the Senate is a number of years away from the program, and I don't want to see him looking at patch 30 or 31 or 32. But the reality is if all we do is to take what we have and extend it, we are not going to turn this situation around. My colleague from Virginia and I started talking about one of the key concepts in our repeal and replace strategy, and that is making sure we have a hard date--really, for the first time--to start paying for value in health care. Repeal and replace has that hard date. This is long, long overdo. Until then, in much of our country, we will still have volume-driven, fee-for-service medicine still driving health care in those communities from one end of the country to another. I heard one observer say what they hoped for is that somebody in Washington would take a machete to fee-for-service. At a minimum, we ought to do what repeal and replace does, which is to reward for the first time quality, and ensure the message goes out to every corner of the country.…”