Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I am on the Energy and Commerce Committee; I am on the Budget Committee; and I am on the Rules Committee. But I am also a co-chair of the House Republican Doctors Caucus, and last week, the Surgeon General of the United States, Vivek Murthy, asked if he could come talk to us. We made that a bipartisan meeting. We included Democrats who are physicians as well in that meeting. Dr. Murthy was concerned primarily about physician burnout, and he has encountered a lot of it since he has reassumed his role as the Surgeon General, the Nation's top doctor. We shared with the Surgeon General one of the principal drivers. Yes, the pandemic has been a problem. Yes, cutting down elective surgeries early in the pandemic and clobbering the cash flow in offices was a problem. But one of the real drivers of physician burnout today is constant, constant haggling and no solution over these cuts. A year ago, we were here on this floor talking about a 9.4 percent cut in Medicare reimbursement rates. Now, at the last minute, God came out of the machine and saved the Nation's doctors, but here we are again. The thing is, we all knew this was coming. It wasn't a mystery. We could have had hearings, as Ranking Member Brady has pointed out. We could have had hearings in our committee, but we chose not to. We chose to squander that time, and now the Surgeon General is concerned about burnout in the Nation's physician corps.…”