Posted on 02/06/2005 2:48:43 PM PST by anniegetyourgun
WASHINGTON (PAI)--The Bush administration poses a large threat to health care, and especially for the poor through its proposed Medicaid changes, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said.
Clinton told hundreds of health care activists Jan. 27 at a Families USA conference that Bush wants to "block grant" Medicaid. That would limit federal dollars to the states. The money helps pay medical costs for 50 million people, including the poor and the elderly poor.
Such block grants in turn would throw more of the burden of paying for medical care onto cash-strapped state governments, she said. That already forces some of them, notably in Tennessee, to deprive hundreds of thousands of people of health care.
Clinton and other speakers, including Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), urged participants to undertake grass-roots mobilization against Bush’s plans, which the president could unveil in his budget, on Feb. 7.
Kerry, last year’s Democratic presidential nominee against Bush, also discussed his legislation, introduced this month, to provide universal coverage for children.
But with Republicans in power in Congress and the White House, the focus of both speakers and delegates was more on stopping bad GOP ideas for health care legislation and programs.
Obama, however, encouraged participants to keep seeking improvements. He said years of lobbying and grass-roots pressure eventually push politicians such as himself into "scurrying on board" health care reform, despite special-interest pressure.
"We have to put a human face on the drive to cut health care costs, and its consequences," Clinton said. "We need a health care conversation again in this country, and not after we have slashed programs that keep people alive."
Clinton, as First Lady, was the author and prime mover behind the Clinton administration universal health care plan, defeated by a combination of Republican filibustering and negative and distorted health insurance company television ads.
The New York senator said Medicaid recipients would be the most vulnerable to Bush’s plans. She said the administration especially is hitting those who get both Medicare and Medicaid.
Those elderly have incomes of less than $10,000 yearly each, and 25 percent are in long-term care facilities, she added.
When Bush’s prescription drugs law takes full effect on Jan. 1, 2006, those “dual benefit” Medicaid-Medicare seniors will be arbitrarily assigned to drug companies, regardless of whether the firms want them, supply their needed medicines and at what cost.
And in Medicaid, due to federal cuts, Tennessee’s GOP governor just dumped 323,000 seniors from Medicaid rolls, Clinton said. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), the president’s brother, wants to convert his state’s Medicaid system into a voucher plan, capping what the state would pay anyone. That would leave seniors uncovered for catastrophic illness, she added.
"We have to look at Medicare and Medicaid together," to find efficiencies and cost-savings without hurting people, Clinton admitted. "But there is not a one-size-fits-all solution."
Clinton also cast the fight against Bush’s Medicare and Medicaid plans--which she said give $150 billion to the big pharmaceutical companies--as "a matter of personal and national values: To ask what our obligation is to provide for the care of the poor and the sick.
"There is an opportunity to improve Medicaid, but establishing it as a block grant is not a solution. We are going to have to stand our ground and fight for basic rights to access to affordable, quality health care," Clinton urged.
Obama, a rising star within the Democratic Party--and former chairman of the Illinois State Senate Health Committee--focused on the fact that with millions of uninsured, underinsured, and rising co-pays, premiums and other indicators of the illness of the health care system, Bush omitted it from his agenda.
Saying he found health care was the overriding issue among low, moderate and upper-income families during his two years on the Senate campaign trail, Obama added: "Bush did not have a single comment in his inaugural address" about health care.
"We have an administration that has invested its entire political capital in fixing the Social Security system that is not broken, instead of fixing a health care system that is broken--and that everybody knows is broken," he said.
She always has that blank look in her eyes. Like she is zoning out.
I think it's called the "death stare."
Whew! The Old Hil is back!
I haven't read anythin yet about Kerry's legislation he's introduced giving every child healthcare. Isn't that what Medicaid is?
Aaaaahhhhh shaddup,Hillary!
Boy Chelsea sure could use some fashion advice..........
Note who she is traveling with in this story.....Kerry & Obama.....
Oh, the horror! Limiting spending on welfare!
It's an old photo....
Yeah, yeah, the mean, evil Republicans are going to take away medicare, medicade, social security, all your food, water, and medicine, they're going to shut off your heat, and gas everyone's puppy.
No, no, no....don't you get it? The liberal writer here tells us that her failures were only due to distortions and filibustering by R's.....
Wonder why?
"Yeah, yeah, the mean, evil Republicans are going to take away medicare, medicade, social security, all your food, water, and medicine, they're going to shut off your heat, and gas everyone's puppy."
Good! Let's get those pesky puppies first! /sarcasm
I think you're right. What Hillary has is more like a "dead stare."
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