Jim McDermott: “This hearing is surreal. It ought to be about jobs not about poverty because if everybody had a job there would not be…”

I always love to come to these propaganda hearings before the elections, and it is obvious we are trying to hold the insurance companies harmless here.

This area is such a large part of our economy as well as such a large part of our question of national security.

A strong Medicare doesn't mean we turn the program over to the insurance industry, and it doesn't mean we shift more costs on to the beneficiaries.

None of us on our side who were involved in drawing it up thought for one minute that we had created the Ten Commandments off the mountain, which haven't been changed since Moses brought them down off the mountain.