Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, he so quite correctly outlined some of the difficulties facing Congress as we get to this end-of-the-year crunch of legislation that has to pass before the end of the year. There is no place where this is more pronounced than for our Nation's doctors. The very people that we asked to get us through the pandemic, the very people that we have asked to take care of us. And now we arrive at the end of this Congress, and we say: Thank you for your service, here is your pay cut. And they go: Wait, what? A paycheck. The Surgeon General came to the Doctors Caucus earlier this year and said he is concerned. He goes around and talks to doctors all over the country, he is concerned about the level of burnout that he is seeing in the Nation's physicians. He said he has never seen this before. It really should not be a surprise. You work doctors and nurses day and night during the pandemic, and then you turn around and say, You know what, we don't value what you do. The evidence for that is right as we barrel into the end of the year, there are significant cuts to the physician fee schedule, sequesters, paygo, budget neutrality requirements that in aggregate spell about an 8 to 9 percent reduction in payments for physicians. For years, I fought to repeal the sustainable growth rate formula. The sustainable growth rate formula was repealed in 2015.…”