I want to keep our work this evening laser focused on the future.

What happened is exactly what happened in our State of Tennessee 20 years ago when we expanded Medicaid called 'TennCare.'

There was a 62 percent increase in premiums this year.

The Affordable Care Act said it wanted to lower costs and increase access. Who could disagree with that?

I would contend that every American is entitled to two things: number one, an opportunity, and number two, the right to define success for themselves so long as long as it doesn't impact the liberty of others.

In the State of Tennessee we recognized this problem a few years ago, and hats off to our State legislature and the Governor who provides -- ours is the only State in the union, I think, that provides free community college and technical…

I just can't imagine a more important paradigm or model, you know, in any trade, in any vocation.

It's criminal that more people don't know about them.

it looks to me like that's a sloppy system, if that's the case.

But is that a system we want to continue at the VA? Because the VA is a huge system, and treating millions of people, and not thousands, but millions.

Now I agree with that, it would do that. I'm not saying that you should do that. We have a situation now where there's 30-something thousand people, these are all deaths that are preventable.

Obviously, we know that there's a drug epidemic, and certainly in the State of Tennessee I live in, it is.