Ron Kind

I don't think anyone going into health care reform, certainly those of us who supported the Affordable Care Act, thought it was going to be easy or that it was going to happen overnight.

I think Mitt Romney in the light of honesty and full disclosure admits himself there is a lot in the Affordable Care Act that he can work with.

I really think this is the Holy Grail of what we need to be focused on when it comes to health care reform.

What we need is more cooperation and more effort in reforming a health care system that is complicated, that is too expensive. We have tools in place now in this legislation that will not only enable reforming the way health care is…

While I support the legislation and what it's trying to accomplish here, I still think, following today's debate, there is going to be a lot more work that we're going to have to do in dealing with the other side of the Capitol, with the…

Unless or until you put something on paper so we can truly analyze the impact of this what this is going to mean, all this is theoretical.

So having that bipartisan conversation is difficult to have when you have principles or issues that we had previously agreed on that suddenly divide us today.

This will not only continue the death spiral that our health care providers are experiencing in the State of Wisconsin...

I think the Affordable Care Act needs a chance to move forward to see if this stuff works before you can actually have a serious conversation about a voucher or a premium support plan.

I can't think of a bigger challenge than the dysfunctional health care system and the impact it is having not only on people's lives, but on our budget and our national finances.

80 percent of the seniors in western Wisconsin rely on Social Security as their sole source of retirement income, 80 percent. They can't take a $6,000 hit in Medicare.

We can go down another route, which merely privatizes Medicare, turns it into a private voucher plan, shifts the cost on the backs of seniors, an additional $6,000.

We have to change the way we pay for health care, so that we are paying for the value or the quality or the outcome of care.

I would be the first to admit that IPAB requires a leap of faith. But I supported it.

I believe that a global economic power like us has to have the ability to make and invent and produce things again.

I mean, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month the day President Obama was sworn in; $17 trillion of wealth was already destroyed in the stock market; and you inherited a $1.5 trillion annual budget deficit.

I supported it, because looking back in retrospect, if we had a balanced budget amendment in place, it might have made it a little bit difficult to pass the 2001, 2003 tax cuts without paying for them or entering into two major wars in…

I love your phrase, bring science to the point of care.

May I inquire, does the majority side have an extra minute that they could spare?

The only reason you see a chart like this is just to score cheap political points and to confuse people.

If we are going to be serious at all about trying to attack the number of uninsured, you have to do something to deal with small businesses to make it more affordable.

I thank my friend. As I mentioned in committee last week during the markup, I think it would make sense if the committee, Ways and Means that had jurisdiction, were to hold some hearings as we move forward on ways that we can improve the…

I do subscribe to Cordell Hull's theory on trade. He once stated that trade is more than just goods and products crossing borders because, when that occurs, armies don't. These are an important tool in our diplomatic arsenal and also part…

It seems to me that what you have been able to achieve there through this collaboration of employers is a model we ought to be looking at nationwide.

The Ryan plan, the Republican plan that was just passed is that they would do away with all these reforms and instead create a voucher plan that virtually ends Medicare