Patricia Schroeder: “I do think there is an interconnection. This morning when I arrived, I gave a 5-minute dissertation of what was going on…”

“I do think there is an interconnection. This morning when I arrived, I gave a 5-minute dissertation of what was going on in Medicare and Medicaid and talked about the fact that what they are talking about doing is taking away the spousal impoverishment, so that if a family, if a couple, suddenly one has to go into a nursing home, guess what? They have to spend everything they have before they can qualify for Medicaid. They undid the spousal impoverishment that we worked so hard on. They also said that now, if you go to a nursing home, there is not going to be any standards that we worked so hard to get, standards to treat people with dignity. We remember those horror stories, and on and on and on. I want the gentleman from Texas to know that a Member from the other side took the floor, would not yield back to let me answer him, and started saying that I was doing mediscare again and this was just terrible and what was really wrong with America was Federal estate taxes were too high.”