Political Quotes

“Also, there will continue, unfortunately, to be a decline in the number of children covered by the health insurance of their parents at a point of employment. The population will continue to age. More people will be in the advanced ages, which is the greatest source of additional cost to the Medicaid Program. We are making some policy decisions such as those embedded in our recent vote on the immigration bill that are going to result in greater demands on the Medicaid system. So there is no basis for the proposition that we can meet all of these challenges to the Nation's health care system and sustain a $250 billion cut in the Medicaid Program, most of it being a cut at the State level, not at the Federal level. Finally, in the Medicaid system, one area of reform that cries out is to treat all States fairly. Today we have extreme disparities in terms of the funding that is provided for the poor child, the poor frail elderly, and the disabled from one State to the next. Those disparities are a function of history, the fact that we have built up a practice of inducing States to come into expanded Medicaid services by the Federal Government, matching or more than matching those State commitments. Those States that had a sufficient level of affluence to afford a more luxurious system have developed that, and, therefore, that has led to substantially higher amounts of Federal support for their Medicaid programs than for the less affluent States.”