Ron Kind

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.

I am sorry, but that is just not good enough. We can't sit around and wait 10 years to start making important changes within the health care system.

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.

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.

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

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.

I thank my good friend from Michigan for yielding me this time and for his leadership on this issue. Mr. Speaker, just to address the previous speaker's comments, if you're a small business in America with 50 or fewer employees, you don't…

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…

I thank the ranking member on the Ways and Means Committee for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, in the waning days of the work we were doing to get the Affordable Care Act in shape for consideration before the entire Congress, I wasn't…

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I want to thank the ranking member for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, just to set the record straight, the amendment that was offered by Mr. McDermott at the Rules Committee, and what our Ranking Member Levin and we Democrats in the…

I thank the gentleman. The studies show that one out of every three health care dollars is going to tests, they are going to procedures, they are going to things that don't work. They're not improving health care. And oftentimes, because…

I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding me this time. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to H.R. 5. Two years ago, the Affordable Care Act was passed, and I was a proud supporter of that legislation. Not because I thought it was…

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

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.

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.

Going south to hook up to the interstate bridge down there is not a viable option. That too is under study for expansion, given the increased traffic load that's going through it today. What this bridge that's being proposed considers is…

I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, this bridge is in my congressional district. I have been living and breathing this issue for the last 16 years. Mr. Speaker, it's time to build a bridge. This is a bipartisan…