Political Quotes

“When I say that opportunities have been squandered, I put that first and foremost because it very much demonstrates the bipartisanship, working together, not having roadblock after roadblock after roadblock placed in front of good ideas; working together. That serves real people, those seniors who are out there today. Let me close and say the one other thing the leader mentioned, which is critically important--there can be all sorts of solutions proposed, whether for prescription drugs or to save Medicare long term. The one answer that was clear after a year of work on this bipartisan Medicare commission, one idea that repeatedly came forward from the experts all over the United States of America, and even people coming in from other countries, was that a one-size-fits-all system, dictated by Washington, DC, the beltway mentality, is the one thing that will be destructive to me delivering health care; whether it is Bill Frist as a heart transplant surgeon or my father who practiced for 55 years, initially down in Mississippi and then back up in Tennessee. The one thing that will destroy quality is one-size-fits-all, which inevitably results in price controls, which destroy creativity, research, innovation, the hope for cures for Alzheimer's, for stroke, for heart disease. One last component. There are things we can do now, now in the next 6 months, on prescription drugs. We don't have to wait forever.”