Lincoln Chafee: “if you voted yes on the Chafee amendment we just agreed to, then you should vote no on the Roth amendment. The Roth…”

“if you voted yes on the Chafee amendment we just agreed to, then you should vote no on the Roth amendment. The Roth amendment allows States to drastically reduce Medicaid coverage for all groups of women and children. If the Roth amendment prevails and we strike the protections that we just adopted in my amendment, the Roth amendment grandfathers only those AFDC-eligible individuals who are enrolled in Medicaid at the time of enactment. There are no protections for those who meet the same standards after the enactment. Second, it strikes the provisions in my amendment that reinstate the standard for calculating income. Thus, a pregnant woman or 6-year-old child with a family income below the current poverty standards will not qualify for Medicaid coverage if the State adopts a more restrictive income test, such as school lunches or food stamps. Finally, I would say the United States has the highest percentage of children in poverty of any industrial nation in the world. I certainly hope we will not make it worse by denying these children their Medicaid coverage.”