Nathan Deal: “if we want to talk about who won and who lost, let us talk about who did win. It was not special interests. It was those…”

“if we want to talk about who won and who lost, let us talk about who did win. It was not special interests. It was those who qualify under the Family Opportunity Act who for the first time for families with disabled children who may be up to 300 percent of poverty will now be able to receive services. That will be 115,000 children who are disabled that will gain Medicaid coverage by 2015, according to CBO. The Home and Community Based Services, the estimate is that another 120,000 enrollees will be able to take advantage of this, getting services in their own home or in their community, rather than having to go to a nursing home. With the program that is included of money following the person, instead of people having to go into a nursing home again, they will be able to have services in their own home; and it is estimated that another 100,000 people are going to qualify for that over the next 8- to 9-year period. So those are some of the people who are certainly going to be benefited. Now let us talk about the program overall. Medicaid is a program that is out of control. Even with the reforms of slowing it down by three-tenths of 1 percent over the next 5 years, it is still going to grow at an estimated 7 percent growth rate; and over the next 10 years, we are going to be spending in State and Federal money $5.2 trillion. Let us talk about some of the claims that have been made during the time we have been in recess that are without substance and fact.…”