Political Quotes

“I rise this afternoon to talk for a few minutes about a hospital in Pennsylvania, WillsEye Hospital. This is a hospital which is not only critically important to our State but to the Nation as well. It serves people from across our State and across the country. WillsEye Hospital is a public trust that was gifted to the city of Philadelphia and founded in 1832. It was the first dedicated eye hospital in the country, providing care to the blind and the indigent-- something they still do today. They still have that same mission. Unfortunately, if the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services--what we know as CMS--has its way, WillsEye Hospital will no longer be able to provide this kind of care. This is world-class care that so many Pennsylvanians and so many Americans can speak to personally. I had a personal experience when my daughter Julia had an eye problem years ago, and WillsEye did great work for her. In this case, CMS is using an arbitrary ratio of the number of inpatients and outpatients to say that WillsEye Hospital is not a hospital and should be what is known as an ambulatory surgery center, which could have drastic implications and ultimately force WillsEye to close. Again, this was an institution founded almost 200 years ago. Last week I went to WillsEye in Philadelphia to talk about this problem and had the opportunity to meet Joey Povio, whose picture is in this enlarged photograph.…”