Political Quotes

“I wish to touch on a few points with respect to this report. Obviously, the key to fixing health care is to contain costs. Our bipartisan legislation does that by making sure all Americans have more clout in the marketplace. We achieve that by making sure that everyone goes into a big pool, because if they are off by themselves, they don't have a lot of ability to get the best deal for their health care dollar. But if they belong to a bigger group, they have a lot better chance of containing costs. We cut the administrative costs of health care. We use a State and regional pooling approach that has been found to cut administrative costs. We get patients out of unnecessary hospital emergency room visits because more would get seen on an outpatient basis. We make progressive changes in tax law and we empower consumers, because for the first time, if they have employer-based health coverage, they could actually find out what is being spent on their health care. Right now, basically all they know is they are not seeing their wages go up because health care costs are eating up all of the employers' resources. We think making sure that the worker knows what is being spent on health care provides them a new set of opportunities to get more for their health care dollar. My view is that today's health care system is largely driven by employers and insurance companies. Clearly, there is a significant role to play for them.…”