Political Quotes

“In 1965, when Medicare was created of course it was created without a prescription drug benefit. It seems unimaginable now in the year 2000 that the Congress would create a program to provide for the health care of the elderly without providing a prescription drug benefit, but those were different times. In 1965, a far smaller percentage of Americans in general and American seniors used prescription drug benefits on a regular basis, and so Congress did not include prescription drug benefits in the creation of Medicare. But today, as we stand at the millennium in the year 2000, the world is a very different place, and today's seniors, as we all do, benefit from health care innovations that were inconceivable just 35 years ago, and particularly in the area of pharmaceutical products and biological products. Today if you do not have access to the latest miracle drugs produced by the pharmaceutical industry and you do not have access to the latest biological products that are being produced, that are creating cures for diseases that could not have been imagined 35 years ago, if you do not have access to these products, you really do not have good health care in America.”