Political Quotes

“It's illegal to be a smart shopper. That's exactly right. You can't make that up. It's illegal. It would be like telling you, if you went into CVS to buy some aspirin, and you knew you were going to use them for a year--you had a family, if you wanted to buy the bottle that had 100 and the per unit price is one-third of what it is if you're going to buy the bottle of 20, it would be illegal for CVS to be able to sell it to you at a lower price per unit. That's what we have in Medicare. Everybody understands you've got to pay for what you're going to get. But the fundamental debate here--and this is what was reflected in the Ryan budget with the voucher plan--is: are we going to try to address what are obvious failures in the system of the delivery of health care, like not allowing for prescription drug price negotiation? That would save $165 billion, and it wouldn't cut a single benefit. Or, are we going to go allow that system that makes no sense continue and instead take $165 billion worth of benefits out of Medicare so that if you go to the doctor, they may treat you for a broken wrist but not a broken forearm. It doesn't make sense. And it certainly doesn't make sense to start talking about benefit cuts before you have the system reform and can get savings that are literally right on the table in front of you. So we can deal with this debt situation that we have in this country. It is serious. Democrats understand that. The President understands it.…”