Political Quotes

“But that board was made essential by decisions that were made in the health care bill. In the health care bill, we took $500 billion--$\1/2\ trillion--that should have stayed with Medicare to solve Medicare problems. The doc fix is one of the big problems we need to solve. It is up to about, I think, $230 billion that we need to do that. That would be a pretty good chunk out of this. And unless that is done, people won't be able to see a doctor. I keep saying, if you can't see a doctor, you really don't have health insurance, and that is what we are going to be doing to our seniors. We cut $135 billion from hospitals, we cut $120 billion from the 11 million seniors who are on Medicare Advantage, we took $15 billion from nursing homes, and we took $7 billion from hospices to spend on programs that have nothing to do with Medicare or those things. That is fraud, and it shouldn't have happened. The CBO Actuary and the Chief Medicare Actuary have acknowledged this reality. Incidentally, the Chief Medicare Actuary says the program is going to go broke in 2024, and CBO says it will happen in 2016. Now 2016 is pretty short term to be fixed. I think 2024 is short term. So whichever estimate you want to take, Medicare is in trouble and $500 billion should not have been taken out of it. That $500 billion should have been dedicated to fixing Medicare.…”