I hope this is the first of many more hearings that we can do to explore avenues of bipartisan cooperation on reforming a healthcare system that is in desperate need of reform.

if at the end of the day all we are doing is talking about cost shifting, that is not the path forward because that is not the reform that we need to create the right incentives to get better value at a better price within the healthcare…

I urge you to support this common sense, good governance bill, and I thank you for holding this hearing.

I am you a little surprised that in the course of today's hearing and the questioning, the R word hasn't been mentioned yet, because we are really talking about rationing.

I think there will be great resistance with current Medicare beneficiaries for any increased cost sharing that might be asked of them.

If we continue to exempt current Medicare beneficiaries to any changes or the 55-and-above population, which is the Baby-Boom generation, we are really not advancing the ball that well.

We need a long-term, bipartisan deficit reduction agreement in this place that is comprehensive and that will get our fiscal house in order.

I really don't understand the argument for holding the debt ceiling hostage and jeopardizing the full faith and credit...

Many of us at the time who voted against it didn't think it was fiscally responsible to be offering these higher reimbursement payments to the MA plans without any ability to pay for it to begin with.

We have to change the way we pay for health care so it is value- or outcome-based, and no longer volume-based payments.

It is going to require a lot of hard work. It is quite frankly going to take the effort of a Nation, not just one party, to try to reform a health care system that is in desperate need of reform.