Political Quotes

“last Friday, I went to Rockford, IL, and had a roundtable discussion about healthcare. There is a lot of debate about healthcare in the Congress and certainly in Washington. What I have tried to do is to take this issue home and ask the people who actually are responsible for providing healthcare, and the people I represent, what they think about the new Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act. What I found is that with virtually no exceptions, they are all gravely concerned that the changes that are going to be made to the healthcare system in America, which represents a dramatic portion of our economy, could have a very negative impact on the real lives of people across my State and across the Nation. Hospital administrators were there to talk about this issue. Swedish Covenant is one of the hospitals well known and respected in the area; OSF as well, and the administrators of both of these hospitals talked about the negative impacts of cutting back Medicaid coverage. What the Republicans are suggesting in their proposal is that the expansion of Medicaid to provide health insurance for low-income Americans would continue until 2020 and then be cut off, and, they would argue, we will make it more cost efficient. We will let the Governors come up with alternatives.…”