Political Quotes

“I think this body is making a mistake and is taking a very wrong path by attacking and criticizing this particular nominee. To provide just a moment of context to his appointment, when I was here yesterday I had a graph that showed that in 1955, the year that I was born, we spent about $12 billion on health care as a nation. Last year we spent $2.5 trillion, 200 times as much. The graph showed not only the steep curve that took us from $12 billion to $2.5 trillion a year, but also the fact that curve was accelerating. It was getting steeper. In the last year the year-to-year increase was $134 billion in health care expenditures. That is the biggest year-to-year increase in the history of the Republic. If we kept at it, by 2016 a family of four in Rhode Island would be paying $26,000 in premiums for a basic health care policy. We are in both an unsustainable and an accelerating health care cost increase environment. Something absolutely has to be done about it.”