Burgess Owens: “Nothing is more important now on the legislative agenda than the rape of Medicare and Medicaid. Many people have focused…”

“Nothing is more important now on the legislative agenda than the rape of Medicare and Medicaid. Many people have focused on Medicare and do not even know that Medicaid is being cut even more drastically than Medicare. Medicaid is being cut by $180 billion over a 7-year period. But it is a smaller program and the percentage of the cut is much greater. Of even greater significance than that is the fact that there are proposals on the table to eliminate the entitlement for Medicaid. Medicaid at present offers a means-tested entitlement. That is, if you can prove that you are poor and needy, then you qualify for Medicaid if you are in the category which on the basis of this means-testing process makes you eligible. This means-tested entitlement, as we call it, is now on the chopping block. It is being proposed that it be eliminated.”