On the recordMarch 9, 2017
It is. Mr. President, I think you are seeing that too. The critical needs hospitals, the critical access hospitals--the only hospitals available--are often also hospitals that disproportionately have people who are not insured or people who are of low income who aren't on any government program. What has happened in those hospitals and in the ones that have been able to stay open is that they have often had to go outside the traditional community support they had and associate with a bigger hospital. That may turn out to have been a good thing, but one of the basics of the President's healthcare plan was--which we now know is a highly unlikely result--that everybody will have coverage. In a world where everybody has coverage, you don't have the disproportionate share of problems that inner-city hospitals, like the Truman Hospital in Kansas City, MO, have, or rural hospitals, like the dozen-plus that we have in our State that are critical needs hospitals. Those things don't happen. If this had worked the way the President thought it would work--and Democrats, when they, all on their own, passed this bill 7 years ago-- we wouldn't be having the problems we see now: the havoc in our healthcare system--leaving Missourians, people from Alabama, people from Wyoming, people from all over the country with higher costs, with fewer options, and with more uncertainty.…
