2008: Hillary Clinton (pictured above) has been elected president. Announces that the billions earmarked for African Aids will now be used for cellulite research.
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.
HILLARY CLINTON WARNS ACTIVISTS
keyword being ACTIVISTS...who the h___ else cares what she say??????????????
With apologies to Elton John, it's nice to see The HildaBeast getting back to her roots, LOL!
"I was justified when I was five
Raising cane, I spit in your eye
Times are changing, now the poor get fat
But the fever’s gonna catch you when the b*tch gets back!
I will grant everyone on this thread...I don't know the details of the budget...But, if that's what Joe-Sixpack is taking away from this...it will work in the DEM's favor.
It just seems like deja vue all over again......
That POS should have a sign on her backside danger keep back 500'
2008: Hillary Clinton (pictured above) has been elected president. Announces that the billions earmarked for African Aids will now be used for cellulite research.
Let's scare a few more old folks. It's the Democratic way.
Nah, that's not Hillary. The stomach is too flat.
There's that dead stare again.....
LOL!!!
Ya gotta work on the ankles though....
Yes, that's what medicaid does for those too poor to afford medical insurance. It pays all the medical and pharmacy bills with no deductable.
Kerry needs an issue so he's doing the, "It's all for the Children," song and dance.
I like the idea of Kerry running in 2008. Although he'll never get through he primary---and if he does, it's one more generational rule by the GOP---he'll sure muddy the waters of the Democrats' ambitions.
Yes! Of course it is!!!
Your link to the ILCA... Isn't that the old International Labor Communists Association? Yes... I think that's it!!!
TennCare is HillaryCare. The witch lies through her teeth so much she probably has to wear dentures.
Exactly.....she keeps such company.
Bringing everyone to the lowest common Democrat Denominator "for the good of all!" Comply, or Die you commoners!!!
Katie! Bar the Door!!!
The question is ---in light of the resounding 2004 Values Voters Victories---how "conservative" will Hillary get?
Clinton recently proposed moderating the Democrats' savagery on abortion (snicker).
OTHER UPCOMING HILLARY REVISIONISMS: "I hate men who cheat on their wives" "Vast right wing conspiracy? What Vast right wing conspiracy" "Baking cookies is my fave after-work activity"
Hillary's gonna mighty busy with her Campaign 2008 Extreme Makeover. She's got four years to make people believe she's Mother Teresa.
Let's see. After she opens a charge at Wal-Mart, enrolls in Divinity School, and gets a lifetime membership in the John Birch Society, she'll need to get a shopper's card at Sam's Club, and schedule daily morning prayer services in her Senate office.
And just to cover all bases, Bill will take an anti-adultery pledge in the vestibule of the National Cathedral, when Hillary takes her minister's vows.
Oh, and Hillary will campaign wearing the official DNC apron, and give cookie-baking demonstrations while on the stump, and pose with an aresenal of firearms while engaged in target practice.
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