Political Quotes

“I think people in every single State care about access to healthcare. Now, I came to the Senate in 2009, and in that year, we decided to make a major effort to fill in huge holes in our healthcare system. Well, we had Medicaid for the least affluent, but then folks who were just above that, they couldn't afford private insurance; they also didn't qualify for Medicaid, so we created extended Medicaid and made it a State option that covered a lot more people. And then when you came to the middle class, you had folks who had insurance through their employer but not every employer provided insurance. And so we created the healthcare exchange where you could buy insurance and you could do so with tax credits to help you make the payments so that they were affordable. Well, that plan was pretty straightforward, but a man named Frank Luntz--he was a pollster and messagemaker for the Republicans--put out a memo. And I was one of the first Members of the Senate to see this memo. It was April of 2009. And the memo said: Whatever the Democrats come up with to improve healthcare, we are going to call it a government takeover because we have done focus groups, and that scares Americans.”