Since Medicare is on track to go bankrupt in 2024, the de facto Obama Medicare plan is to rob it and watch it disappear, leaving future generations without any hope of receiving benefits and today's seniors with an unpredictable future.
Like my colleagues, I did about 10 to 15 town hall meetings on this issue; and what I found is people came with a sincere interest to learn, a sincere interest to cut through the rhetoric and understand how this Medicare bill impacts them in their daily lives.
Workers organized and fought for worker rights and food safety, Social Security and Medicare - they fought to change government. And they won.
If Republicans eliminate Medicare, America will become a country in which you can never retire - and once you physically can no longer work, you are desperately poor until you die.
All the experts agree Medicare is going to go broke.
There's a need to reform Medicare, but not a need to cut a half trillion dollars out of Medicare.
But here's what I would tell people of my generation. I turn 40 this year. There isn't going to be a Social Security. There isn't going to be a Medicare when you retire. Forget about what your benefit is going to look like. There isn't going to be one if we don't make some reforms to save that program now.
Medicare is a promise we made to seniors more than four decades ago. When President Johnson signed Medicare into law, one in three seniors lived in poverty. Half of seniors had no health coverage at all.
To be sure, debates will linger about whether Medicare is too large or too small. Debates remain about the allocation of Medicare dollars. But December 8, 2003, demonstrated that there is no debate about this most fundamental fact: Medicare must survive.
A Harris poll I've seen says only 12 percent of the electorate names taxes as one of the most important issues facing the nation. Voters put tax cuts dead last, behind education, Social Security, health care, Medicare and poverty.
If we do nothing, as the Republicans suggest, we're going to see health care costs reach a point where small businesses can't afford it and families can't afford it. We're going to see people turned down from pre-existing conditions. We're going to find the Medicare doughnut hole - a gap in coverage that's going to hurt a lot of seniors.
When bills come in, Medicare get so many bills every day, it pays most of them and then goes back later to figure out if they were fraudulent, if it ever goes back at all.
A major driver of the cost of healthcare in the United States is a compromise that was reached with the American Medical Association in the 1960s when Medicare was first established.
When we think of entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare immediately come to mind. But by any fair standard, the holy trinity of United States social policy should also include the mortgage-interest deduction - an enormous benefit that has also become politically untouchable.
On economic policy, Pence has held to the key building block of growth. He is a budget hawk who voted against President George W. Bush's fiscally bloated No Child Left Behind education bill and hyper-expensive Medicare prescription-drug bill. He said he would not support new middle-class entitlements. He was consistent.
We know that Medicare's going broke in seven years, but we need to start over. That's what the American people want us to do.
This debt crisis coming to our country. The wall and tidal wave of debt that is befalling our nation. Medicare and Social Security go bankrupt within ten years, we have a debt that is looming so high that in the last year of President Obama's budget just the interest payments on our debt is $916 billion dollars.
We added Medicare Part D to a system facing bankruptcy and gave no thought to means testing it.
I am just one of the overwhelming majority of Americans who is responsible and hard-working and at one point in their life benefited greatly from government programs such as student loans, Medicare, and Social Security.
America should meet its obligations in the form of Social Security, Medicare, our ability to pay our military, legally binding legislation that allows unemployment compensation, the judiciary, the federal court system, the federal prison system, all those kinds of things have to be paid for.
Traditionally, Medicare's assurance has been that for the elderly and persons with disabilities that they will not be alone when confronted with the full burden of their health care costs.
Al Gore may think Medicare is at a crossroads, but his plan puts it on a highway to bankruptcy.
We must unequivocally reject any cuts to Social Security or Medicare benefits.
Part of the middle class promise is that, after a lifetime of hard work, you'll be able to retire and enjoy the fruits of that labor. Medicare was established to secure that promise.
Despite the administration's long public information campaign, for many months polls have consistently indicated only 37 percent of those eligible for Medicare say they only partially understand the program.
We have to end Medicare as we know it. We have to fix it.
I believe honor thy mother and father is not just a good commandment to live by, it is good public policy to govern by. That is why I feel so strongly about Medicare.
I'm too young for Medicare and too old for broads to care.
Nobody wants to pay higher taxes. But do you want your kids to get a good education? You have to pay for that. Do you want Medicare for senior citizens? I do. We have to pay for it.
There is a lot of waste in government-run programs generally, and a lot of waste and fraud and misuse of money in Medicare and Medicaid that can be saved.
However, the Medicare prescription drug benefit has changed, and if the nearly 3,000 seniors I have met through 12 town halls can represent a sample of opinion, many seniors do not yet understand the prescription drug program and do not plan to sign up for coverage.
President Obama is closing the prescription drug doughnut hole. He strengthened Medicare! He extended the life of the program by eight years. And what Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan won't admit is that their plan would require current seniors to pay, on average, $600 more each year for prescription drugs.
If every American automatically has health coverage, the age at which Medicare kicks in becomes a less fraught issue. We could gradually raise the age of Medicare eligibility a bit, according to income, and save money.
Democrats are fighting fire with fire. Our principled stance on Medicare and Social Security is absolutely no different than the Republicans' stance on no revenue increases without cuts.
From routine hospital visits and prescription drugs, to emergencies and hospice care, Medicare covers the full range of health services that our nation's seniors rely on every single day.
You can look at that by comparing Medicare's growth rates to the private insurance world, to the other Federal programs that we run, by looking at the billions of dollars, not millions but billions of dollars, we waste every year.