Michael Burgess: “Well said, because that is exactly the point of this exercise this afternoon. These are difficult concepts. They are…”

“Well said, because that is exactly the point of this exercise this afternoon. These are difficult concepts. They are very easy to demagogue; they are very easy to demagogue against the Republican plan. The President himself may choose to do this. Certainly the Democratic leadership in this House has chosen to do that. They do that in the absence of putting forward their own plan. But let's be realistic. We talk about things like premium support. Now, in the 1990s, I'm just a regular guy practicing OB-GYN in Texas, and President Clinton recognizes that Medicare is going to be headed for difficulty in a few years. He convenes a big commission, the bipartisan Medicare commission that is going to save Medicare. Senator Frist, who at the time was relatively new in the Senate, was a heart surgeon from Tennessee. At that time, he was recognized as one of the thought leaders and forward thinking in health care reform. So Senator Frist was on that commission. Senator Breaux from Louisiana, a well-respected conservative Democrat, was on the commission; Bill Thomas, who subsequently became chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the House, was on the commission. The Breaux-Frist Commission came up with a series of recommendations to the Clinton administration on how to sustain Medicare into the future. The Breaux-Frist Commission had a number of recommendations, but the centerpiece of what they recommended to President Clinton was this concept of premium support.…”