Patty Murray

I'm open to a conversation on refocusing accreditors' role, but that should never come at the expense of foregoing the enforcement of important Federal protections like student safety on campus or ensuring a college is financially sound.

Well, thank you very much, Chairman Alexander.

The Federal Government should be enabled to enhance its enforcement tools to ensure functional data and transport standards.

In your testimony, you suggest that in order to, "see the same success that we've seen in the internet, we need a stable base of standard building blocks that allows us to create new technology to benefit patients."

I'm really glad that we're making this a bipartisan priority on this committee and doing the work that I think is so important to get us to a better place.

Well, in order to make sure that patients and clinicians have better access to electronic health information, we need to make sure that no one is deliberately blocking it.

I just want to recognize that wholesale delay of Meaningful Use Stage 3 should be very thoughtfully considered in light of the items that we would impact, give up, that I know we all support.

Our hearing today is focused on health IT because of its potential to improve the quality and value of healthcare for our patients.

I'm hopeful that we can reach some bipartisan agreements on this really critical topic.

I'm very hopeful we will be able to reach an agreement on some ways to strengthen health IT in our country.

I'm especially pleased that this is a shared, bipartisan priority.

We need policies that continue to make healthcare more affordable, not less; expand coverage to more families instead of taking coverage away; and improve the quality of care patients receive.

We can do better and we need to do better to make sure that that transition occurs.

Finally, Dr. Lynch, it is really essential that we make sure our veterans have seamless transition from DOD to VA's health care system, but there are still a lot of barriers out there for our servicemembers and veterans.

So, you can meet the needs of this bill?

This bill will require all VA medical centers to have at least one full-time OB/GYN.

OK. Well, if you could get an answer back to me that is really an important question.

Do you have a timeline on how long that would take?

I really appreciate that. You and I have worked on a lot of critical legislation over many years and I look forward to working with you on getting those bills done.

I believe Senator Blumenthal's proposed legislation talks about the medications related to psychiatric conditions as well as pain.

Well, if you could give me an estimate, I would really appreciate it.

The cost of college is a roadblock to many young people today as well as the long-time burden that student debt puts on them.

To me, this is really unacceptable.

That really places an unfair burden on our students and their ability to succeed.

Skyrocketing costs can be a major barrier for students to go to college and to stay in school.