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All of life can to desert you, all of fortune can desert you, all of opportunity could dessert
you but Medicaid does not
as it currently stands.
Medicaid has never been more important,
I say that because we are in an economy
in which fewer and fewer employers are providing health care
to their employees, they can’t afford to.
We’re in an economy where there's fewer and fewer
middle class,
good-paying, family wage jobs
and Medicaid provides that foundation for prevention,
that foundation for treatment, that foundation for our children, our disabled
and our poverty-stricken, seniors and that foundation we cannot take that away.
In 2010 Medicaid had provided health care for 268- million
low-income children, parents, pregnant women, people with disabilities and
senior citizens
eligible’s.
Unfortunately there are members of Congress who want to slash this.
Medicaid is always in many states or the first thing that
people slash because
poorer people don't vote, they don't organized,
and those who don’t like them do organize
and there a vulnerable target. Which enrages me as a form of Vista volunteer because that's
all I work with is people on
on Medicaid and I love them,
and they were as good as anybody else in the state or anywhere else in the nation.
So some members of Congress are trying to turn this into a block grant program
that means federal Medicaid payments to states and counties would be 35% lower
by
2022
and 49% lower by 2030. These state block grant proposals
are not about flexibility
they are a mirage, they are a back-door cost shift
on the local governments that are already walking on economic tightrope.
Block grants mean that the federal government
absolves itself responsibility, dumps everything on the counties, the counties can't afford
to do a lot so they have to raise taxes or cut services.
What do you think happens
if the Republican proposal
of slashing hundreds
of millions of dollars off of Medicaid takes place?
What do you do when your fifty years of age and poor?
and you have any problem with your heart or if you have cancer?
and you have no health insurance at all? What do you think happens to you?
I will tell you what happens to you, you die.
That’s what happens to you.
So what we're talking about, when we discuss
slashing Medicaid
is a death sentence
for god knows how many
thousands of Americans. It’s a heartless town
and this is a heartless budget
uh... which is come over from the House but frankly some of the amendments that are being
offered in the Senate are even worse than the House budget.
So the reason why we’re all here is because we’re all up against it,
and because we care about people
and because Medicaid that's the one group of people
whether they’re children or whether that with disabilities
or they can't defend themselves.
It makes no sense,
makes no sense morally
and I don't think it makes any sense for the future of this country in terms of our prosperity
because we all do better when we have
a middle-class, a strong middle-class.
And this is going to put that middle-class at Risk. So we've got a fight on our hands
morality is on our side, economic justice is on our side
and we're gonna win this fight. We’re here to tell you
that we are not going to let government here in Washington D.C. customize the poor out
of real health care of security and that is bottom line.