Political Quotes

“Well, I thank my good friend from Missouri. The other part of that is, what they are paying, what my good friend, Dr. Roe from Tennessee, talked about how Medicare pays today less in costs. Commercial insurance on the average nationally pays 130 percent of cost. And there is only one reason--well, there's two reasons for that, but it all comes from the government. The government pays Medicare 80, 90 cents on the dollar, if we're lucky. Medical assistance, which has been expanded tremendously under this bill, only pays 40 to 60 cents for every dollar cost. The President's own agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in their actuarial report--so that's taking the folks at Medicare and taking the brightest and the best in terms of determining the economic impact of this bill, the section that talks about how will this impact our hospitals? Right in that bill, and I'll quote: ``Medicare cuts could drive about 15 percent of hospitals and other institutional providers into the red'' and ``possibly jeopardizing access'' to care for seniors. That's a significant risk. My background was working in rehabilitation therapy as a manager within rural hospitals. And most rural hospitals--and, frankly, underserved urban hospitals--in my experience, if they're having a banner year, make a margin of about 1 to 4 percent.…”