Political Quotes

“we are now entering a postfiscal cliff phase of budget negotiations, and a troubling but familiar refrain is already beginning to echo through this Chamber which goes something like this: In order to fix our deficit, we must cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits. This is wrong. This is flatout wrong and it is factually wrong. A recent Providence Journal editorial touched on the dangers of that misguided approach. The editorial read: We need a better run Medicare and Medicaid, not one that covers fewer people. Quality can be improved and costs contained without throwing people off the rolls and into the streets and back into the free care of emergency rooms mandated for the uninsured and into expensive private insurance. In the end, we all pay in some way, in quality of life and in money, for the gaps we tolerate in our health care system. Attacking Medicare and Medicaid is consistent with a particular political ideology--it has been part of that political ideology for decades now--but it is not consistent with the facts. It ignores the fact that our health care spending problem is systemwide, not just in Federal programs. It ignores the fact that we operate in this country a wildly inefficient health care system. It is not just Medicare. For example, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, in reference to the defense budgets: We are being eaten alive by health care.…”