Jon Tester: “we are about to embark on something that is pretty amazing to me. Next week, I am told, we are going to take up the…”

“we are about to embark on something that is pretty amazing to me. Next week, I am told, we are going to take up the Senate healthcare bill that is going to be the first cousin of the House bill. There are a lot of things that are referred to as putting lipstick on a pig, but this is truly putting lipstick on a pig, where we are going to take healthcare away from millions of Americans. We might make it a little better by extending some Medicare or Medicaid monies, but in the end that will go away. We will potentially set up some high-risk pools for people with preexisting conditions. I will tell you, from my time in the State legislature when we dealt with high-risk pools, that gives access to healthcare for the rich folks. In essence, what we are going to do next week, because some folks in this body forgot to read the Affordable Care Act when it came up, is we are going to repeal it and we are going to replace it with a piece of garbage. Today I rise on behalf of the 48 rural and frontier hospitals in Montana--48 rural and frontier hospitals that are the backbone of our State. I rise for the 77,000 hard-working Montanans who now have healthcare because of Medicaid expansion, and the 41,000 jobs of our State of 1 million people sustained by our healthcare industry today. I rise on behalf of every Montanan who deserves to know what is going on in Washington, DC. What is going on back there? Are you guys really talking about jerking my healthcare away from me?…”