GOP Doctors Caucus: Save Medicare

Floor Speech

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Mr. DesJARLAIS. I thank my colleague. I'll be brief tonight.

I just wanted to point out the fact that I'm proud to stand here with my physician, nursing, dental colleagues, all of the members of the Doctors Caucus, because I can say I think for all of us that none of us chose Congress as our career path in life. Our first passion in life was to help people.

We know that we have a problem facing us. Nobody can deny on either side
of the aisle that Medicare is going broke. As Dr. Roe said, we can't afford to wait to solve this problem. It's there. It's not a partisan issue. It's a people issue. It's about my parents and your parents and our grandparents. We just can't afford to let partisan bickering get in the way of solving this problem.

So what I guess I would ask people to do if you're a Member of AARP, if you've not contacted your Congressman or your representative or your senator, pick up the phone and make sure you know where they stand because they can't answer you that Medicare is not going broke in the next 10 years. We've offered up a lot of solutions to try to stave this off. But we want to make sure that we help you save Medicare, and we're going to do all we can from our end, but we can only do so much.

So if you're a Member of AARP, call AARP, tell them to get on board. The GOP Doctors Caucus will help lead the way. I can say that all of us in this caucus, as we treated patients over the years, we never looked at them as Democrats or Republicans. We just looked at them as patients and people. That's what we're here to do tonight. We're here to help save Medicare, but we need your help, so pick up the phone tomorrow, call your Member of Congress, and make sure you know where they stand, and they need to get on board, and they can't deny that this problem is coming.

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