Political Quotes

“Both of those are areas where there can be significant savings. Folks have said that if they do this sort of legislative approach to remove this lawsuit abuse, the savings to the Federal budget would be about $50 billion over the budgeting timeframe--$50 billion. Any physician, nurse, practitioner, or physician assistant would say the savings would even be greater because of the additional tests and so- called defensive medicine that is practiced in an effort to protect hospitals, physicians, health care providers from the possibility of a lawsuit. They do a lot of extra diagnostic studies--x rays, CAT scans, MRIs, and blood tests--to try to not miss something, which is very unlikely, but they want to protect themselves from a suit. I think the savings would be even greater, but even the government accountants say it would save $50 billion. The other is the so-called CLASS Act--something one of my Democratic colleagues said was comparable to a Ponzi scheme that even Bernie Madoff would be proud of. It was an accounting gimmick, a bookkeeping trick used during debate and passage of the so-called health care law. It was aimed at trying to bring money in in the first 5 years of an accounting scheme where they would then not have to pay for any services and to start paying for services about the sixth year, and then the expenses would go up and up.…”