Jim McDermott

I know it is election season and we have to have hearings like this. I am not sure--I don't know if this is on CSPAN or not, but it is a good time to get some footage of you defending something or other for your campaign commercials.

So how do you measure then the patient who says, well, I wasn't satisfied because I went away and I still ain't got--my sinuses are a mess and he didn't give me antibiotics.

One of the issues that the questions Mr. Tiberi is raising about small practices sort of leads me to the question of consolidation and driving doctors together in larger and larger groups.

Getting the people covered by health care is one thing. Controlling the cost is another thing, and this is about controlling the cost, and I don't believe we have our arms around it yet.

Thanks to MACRA, we have set Medicare on a more sustainable course that will allow us to pay for volume in health care--or excuse me, value in health care, rather than volume.

Passing MACRA was a tremendous bipartisan accomplishment in that it put an end to a cycle of dysfunction.

Now, I hope this is the beginning of a constructive bipartisan conversation about how to advance our shared goal of controlling costs and improving the delivery of health care in the country.

When Medicare was put in place some 50 years ago, a critical decision was made by the medical association in order to have them join in the effort, and they demanded that they be paid their usual and customary fees, and we, on this…

Now, if you want to take away American subsidies, that will mean you are going to have financial hardship for everybody.

Now, if you want to get rid of the individual mandate and keep in place the issue for people with preexisting conditions, you put the insurance industry into a death spiral.

If you want to cover all Americans and secure financial security and control costs, you have limited options.

You cannot have a pool of just sick people in the insurance plan and have the sick ones out here waiting for the day when they can run in and get their insurance.

There is good reason they do not have a plan. There is no place to go.

Now, the truth is we will never get a plan out of the Republicans any different than the ACA.

If Tip O'Neill were here today, he would say, 'Well, this is another smoke and mirrors hearing.'

When the bill passed here in 1983 and they advanced the retirement age from 65 to 67, I am sure there were thousands, millions of people in this country who never thought that was going to ever affect them.

What is the logic for that except for saving money, just cutting benefits from them?

If I understand, Mr. Goss, one and a half million people or one and a quarter million will get an increase of something like 77 bucks on average, and then there is the 15 million that are going to get cut.

We continue to overpay the insurance industry through the Medicare Advantage program.

Prescription drug prices are out of control and the pharmaceutical industry is reaping the benefits.

My colleagues want to give a radical voucher program--give a piece of paper to somebody and say, 'Go find an insurance company that will take care of you...'

The Majority is showing how out of step they are with the American people.

Republican proposals fail spectacularly to meet the needs of seniors.

The core proposal the Republicans have offered to end Medicare as we know it will have devastating effects on seniors.

The Budget Committee, which is about to write a budget to unwind Medicare as we know it.