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When Medicare was created for senior citizens and America 's disabled in 1965, about half of a senior's health care spending was on doctors and the other half on hospitals.

Medicare is expensive because we spend a lot on healthcare. We spend a lot on healthcare basically just because we want to, and doing so has been very good to a lot of people who work in healthcare fields.

Medicare is a monopoly: a central-planning bureaucracy grafted onto American health care. It exercises a stranglehold on the health care of all Americans over 65, and on the medical practices of almost all physicians. Medicare decides what is legitimate and what is not: which prices may be charged and which services may be rendered.

You're going to hear a lot from President Obama and yes, from Joe Biden, you're hearing a little bit about Medicare these days. What they will not tell you is they turned Medicare into a piggybank to fund 'Obamacare.' They took $716 billion dollars to pay for the 'Obamacare' program.

I believe the most important aspect of Medicare is not the structure of the program but the guarantee to all Americans that they will have high quality health care as they get older.

Government did get into the health care business in a big way in 1965 with Medicare, and later with Medicaid, and government already distorts the marketplace.

Healthcare costs are rising, and not just Medicare and Medicaid, but healthcare in general.

When Medicare was first enacted in 1965, it provided coverage for hospitalization, doctor visits and surgeries, but there was no coverage for prescription medications.

Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn't even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we're going to stop it.

Health care costs are an issue both for the government and for our larger economy.