Political Quotes

“I come to the floor to join my colleague from Rhode Island. I applaud him for his diligence, making sure this debate happened today, and for his leadership on this issue. It might sound kind of wonky to say there is a group of Senators that have a caucus called the Delivery System Reform Caucus, but we wear that banner with pride because we know that there are savings in our health care delivery system. We want to make sure that they are delivered for the American people. While some want to talk about cutting people off of service or raising certain ages, we are focused on the fact that there are hundreds of billions of dollars of savings in the delivery system and that it is our job to improve upon them. I like to say to my office team: There is a reason why Ma Bell doesn't exist anymore. The challenge is I have so many young people, and some of them don't remember Ma Bell. But the issue is the delivery system for telecommunications changed, and look at what it unleashed--a lot of great technology. Yes, change, but with ways to drive down costs and deliver better access. That is what we are talking about here with the health care system. My colleague from Rhode Island has had a group for more than a year that has been talking about these delivery system reforms. We are going to come out on a more frequent basis and try to have a dialog with our colleagues about why it is so important.…”