Sen. Lamar Alexander Calls Medicaid a "Medical Ghetto"
By Heather Sunday Nov 22, 2009 8:00am
As Jed noted "What would a health care debate be without some good ol' fashioned race-baiting from the G.O.P.?" Stay classy Alexander. So let me get this straight...the Democrats want to steal from grandma to give to the "ghetto"...or did I miss something here?
Alexander: Every other word we hear coming from the other side is that this vote tonight is historic. And I agree it’s historic, but I think my view of why it’s historic is a little different than their view. And I wonder if my colleagues would not agree with me that this bill is historic in its arrogance—in its arrogance that we in Congress are wise enough to take this entire complex health care system that serves 300 million Americans, that is 16% of our economy, and write a, and think that we could write a 2000 page bill and be wise enough to change it all—all at once.
Or arrogant in the, in its dumping of 15 million low income Americans into a Medical Ghetto called Medicaid that none of us, or any of our families would ever want to be a part of for our health care.
Or arrogant in then sending to the states, who are going broke a big chunk of the bill for what we’ve just done. Or arrogant enough to tell Americans that the bill cost $849 billion and think we’re not smart enough to read the print and figure out that it’s actually $2.5 trillion when it actually is implemented. Or to tell us that paying for reimbursement for physicians is not an important part of a health care bill, and so they run over here in the dead of night—run up the deficit another quarter of a trillion dollars.
I can make a long list of reasons this bill is arrogant—arrogant enough to cut and tax grandma’s Medicare that’s going broke according to the trustees in 2015-2017 and then spend it on somebody else other than grandma.
I mean the bill is arrogant in its telling us that it’s going to reduce premiums for most Americans when in fact it increases premiums for most Americans. So people say “Where is the Republican health care bill?’ and my answer to that Mr. President is don’t expect Sen. McConnell to come rollin’ in here with a wheelbarrow with a 2000 page budget busting, debt ridden, arrogant piece of legislation because that’s not what we believe in.
What we need to do as a Congress is re-earn the trust of the American people by setting a clear goal of reducing health care costs, showing some humility and start moving step by step in that direction and I hope during this hour that we have a chance to talk about the specifics steps to reduce health care costs that we Republicans have offered day after day after day to no avail.
