Scott Garrett: “That is absolutely consistent with my recollection. Another aspect of it was at the time that the master plan as you…”

“That is absolutely consistent with my recollection. Another aspect of it was at the time that the master plan as you described it at that time was to be more, was to be broader than what eventually transpired, and that was to include the block grant type arrangement for Medicaid, as well. Had we done that, we would not be in this budgetary crisis that we find right now where Medicaid has continued to have gone up, and the States actually would have been in a better situation than they are right now. Just as with Medicare, just as with the welfare reform movement, when the States were issued a block grant and given the significant flexibility that they had with the set dollar amount, the States were able to use the ingenuity of their States to actually decrease the enrollment of their welfare recipients and at the same time actually since the dollar limit remained the same, the per capita number per recipient actually went up. So those individuals who had the most need, if you will, had the most difficulty climbing out of their condition and their plight that they were in, you had a larger dollar value that you are able to apply to their particular condition. Had we done the same thing as this Republican Congress at the time intended to, but we were stopped, as you recall; President Clinton put up the roadblock to it. We could have done the exact same thing with Medicaid, done it in a flexible block grant arrangement to the 50 States.”