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Thursday, July 24, 2008

Waxman With A Zinger!


There's clearly no love lost between House Oversight and Government Reforms Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif) and North Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry.

But Waxman outclevered the more junior Republican this afternoon at the Medicare Part D hearing. During friendly questioning of Acting CMS Administrator Kerry Weems, McHenry was making the point that no way could you trust the government to negotiate better prices for drugs under Part D compared to the private sector.

"There are some shortcomings to the program, it's a government program, that's what government does very well, right? Inefficiency is what government does very well," McHenry said of the Part D program.

Weems answered the eventual question on negotiating savings.

Waxman waited until the end of Weems' testimony and then hit the audience with this one-liner:

"Thank you, Mr. McHenry. Mr. Weems, thank you very much for your participation, I know you're anxious to get back to the work that government bureaucracies do so poorly, according to our friends on the other side of the aisle, but I salute you for the work that you do," Waxman said with a smile.

Zinger Zam!

Chairman Waxman will be here all week, folks.

2 comments:

Supremacy Claus said...

Why is that remark a zinger? It is just sarcasm by an enemy of clinical care.

Ramsey Baghdadi said...

You don't think that's a zinger? How about a sarcastic zinger? Per usual, we love receiving comments so keep them coming.