Political Quotes

“It's hard to see how someone would define saving the social safety net by ending the Medicare guarantee for seniors, by slashing Medicaid by over $750 billion, a program that disproportionately helps seniors in nursing homes and disabled individuals. It's really hard to understand how that is preserving the social safety net. It reminds me of that strange statement we once heard that you have to destroy the village in order to save it. Now, let's understand what happens under this budget to Medicare. This budget ends the Medicare guarantee for seniors. It doesn't reform Medicare; it deforms and dismantles it because it forces seniors off the Medicare program, into the private insurance market. And it does nothing, as it dumps the seniors into the private insurance market, to control the rate of increase in health care costs. Instead, it transfers to the senior all those risks and all those costs. Seniors will pay a lot more, while the insurance companies will get all their Medicare payroll taxes. They'll get a bonanza out of this thing, but seniors will be left holding the bag. If your voucher amount, call it whatever you want, is not sufficient to pay for the increased cost, you eat it. And we saw earlier the fact that by the year 2022 seniors will have to pay more than $6,000 above what they would have had to pay under the regular Medicare program. If your doctor's not on a private plan that you can afford, tough luck.…”