Medicare is a much more popular program than Aetna is, with all due respect.

We have to understand the system is fundamentally broken.

How do you feel--everybody here, regardless of political persuasion, is worried about the soaring costs of healthcare.

I applaud the President for understanding that reality, for beginning the process of putting the necessary funds into that struggle.

We do not have options about whether we keep our children healthy, about whether or not the air we breathe is clean.

I personally find it hard to understand how we can import food from small farms in Mexico and in the back woods of China, and that is OK, but somehow or another we are not able to import less expensive prescription drugs from…

Trying to get a handle on caloric intake of people, maybe making fast food chains publish in their menus the kinds of calories that people are absorbing.

My time has expired. Thank you very much, and I will certainly look forward to working with you in the years to come.

I find it very hard to believe, in a world of unfettered, free trade, that we cannot safely bring medicine in from Canada or the United Kingdom.

I hope that you will work on that issue. I think it is absolutely doable and I think that millions of people would be very grateful to see lower-cost prescription drugs in this country.

I think what you will have to be aware of is the drug companies will spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to prevent us from doing that, and I hope we will be able to stand up to that pressure because high cost of prescription…

There are very special interests out there who are prepared to spend huge sums of money and make a quick profit at the expense of the health and well-being of the American people.

On May 5th of this year I signed a letter along with 24 of my colleagues in the Senate and the House asking the Department of the Interior to provide emergency fiscal year 2009 funding to respond to this crisis.

This important legislation, introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders, would quadruple the amount of funding for community health centers over the next 5 years.

Senator Sanders' bill enhancing the Automobile Assistance Allowance is good.

When we talk about the quality-of-life for our veterans, if somebody is immobile and forced to stay at home and can't get around their community, that is certainly a diminution of their quality-of-life.

That's wrong. That is really wrong.

We want to support that effort, but we also want to support the service organizations, other organizations in Vermont.

[w]e understand the importance of providing sufficient resources for vehicles or adaptive equipment to servicemembers and veterans who rely on them, but we cannot support this bill at this time.

Every veteran should know what he or she is entitled to.

I think anything that supports getting veterans to know what they are entitled to, what is available to them, is essential.

Vet Centers help. Why don't we do this? I am the first to happily concede that we have been making some progress.

Does that mean that we have 10,000 more nurses in the VA?

Of course, the Secretary of Homeland Security did not say anything disparaging about veterans.

Thank you, Mr. Begich.