Bernie Sanders

We've got to do that.

The Democratic Party has to do a lot of internal soul searching and to understand that for the last 10 years, the model that they have had really has not worked.

This is the most anti-working class legislation that I have ever seen. This is legislation for the billionaire class.

I am going to do everything I can and I know there are people all over this country who are standing up and are fighting back.

Throwing 23 million people off of health insurance is not great health care.

This is barbaric. Frankly, this is what oligarchy is all about. It's the wealthy and powerful say, we need even more tax breaks despite that fact that we're doing phenomenally well.

I watched them privatize all kinds of things that never worked, because once you go outside and privatize, you are adding layers of bureaucracy and cost.

Ultimately, you are absolutely right, Senator. We cannot forget the need to invest in VA's ability to provide direct care, hire more physicians, expand facilities, because, ultimately, that is the preferred choice of veterans, and we need…

I do not think we should be nickel-and-diming veterans.

So, this is actually taking money away from VA benefits and using it in another purpose.

If they are overprescribing.

Can you say a word about how the VA can lead this country away from opioids, although obviously sometimes they are necessary, into less type of dependent drug approaches?

I want to touch on briefly what is a terrible, terrible national crisis, and that is the opioid epidemic.

So, if veterans lost their Medicaid, there is a reasonable possibility, many of them would turn to the VA for care.

If the Republican health care plan goes through--and I am going to do everything I can to see that it does not...

Cutting Medicaid would hurt veterans. Efforts in Congress to cut Medicaid jeopardize a critical source of health coverage for veterans.

I would like to see that program expanded. What it does is provides debt forgiveness.

What I do not want to see--and I think Senator Tester--many of us do not want to see the shifting of funds that go to traditional VA health care moved to the Choice Program.

The VA has a pretty good health care system.

Everything we do as a Committee--Senator Manchin--will pale in comparison to the hell we are going to catch if it is going to cost $800 million to handle those claims before 2026.

It is impossible to imagine that we could not solve, in good faith, the pharmaceutical pricing problem...

What we need right now in this country are people from coast to coast standing up and fighting back for their own health.

The drug companies are enormously powerful. They own much of the U.S. Congress.

The reason we pay the highest prices in the world is an example of that for prescription drugs.

There is no rational reason why in the United States, Gleevec, which is used to treat leukemia, costs over $10,000 in our country, but $2,100 in Norway.