Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I have listened very carefully to the majority leader and his requests that we come forward and bring amendments to the floor--all of our ideas about how we can improve our healthcare system so that this would be an opportunity through budget reconciliation for us to deal with those issues. I asked my staff to prepare amendments in order to protect the Medicaid system from cuts. I asked my staff to prepare amendments to protect the essential health benefits that are in the Affordable Care Act because it is important that we preserve those benefits, whether it is mental health and addiction services or one that is particularly important to Maryland; that is, pediatric dental. In Maryland, we all recall the loss of a 12-year-old not too many years ago because he couldn't get dental care--Deamonte Driver. I asked my staff to take a look at preparing amendments to protect minority health and health disparities because the Affordable Care Act made tremendous advancements in trying to close that gap on the disparities in minority health and health disparities. I asked my staff to take a look at the tax provisions because we want to make sure that we are not giving tax cuts to wealthy people at the expense of cutting the Medicaid system. I asked them to look at this in a lot of different ways.…”