a choice, that they had a chance to insure millions but that this same vote would likely to cost them their new seats and most of them did lose their seats. but they were true to what president keptdy defined in his book as a congressional profile in courage, the desire to mainin a reputation for integrity that is stronger than a desire to maintain office. joining us now, andy slafity, the former acting administrator for the services for medicaid and medicare under the obama administration. i want to ask you about what congressman blum said. if you are on medicaid, nothing worry about, nothing is changing in medicaid. can you explain to me how you do massive billions of dollars of cuts in medicaid and nothing changes in medicaid? yeah, i think that s probably going to go down as one of the toughest stretches for them to cover, $880 billion is being cut
on health care today. what are they hoping to accomplish? they have a mountain in front of them. they sure do. a question about when and if they can come up with a solution. stephanie, the senate is fond of forming what they call gangs around some of the big issues. we saw the gang of eight around immigration, for example. the one difference, the gangs are bipartisan. this is all republicans and what s more all men as you can see here. republican leadership has been in no small under no small amount of criticism for doing that. i m told this group has actually been meeting informally for some time even before the house vote. it notably misses two prominent senators here, moderate senators on the issue of health care, susan collins of maine and bill cassidy of louisiana who have been working on their own for a separate bill, been left out of this. it is aide range when you consider the demographics of it. rob portman against what the house bill is going to do about medicaid, cutting
the way this bill affects seep your seniors, as you know, 50 to 64, it allows insurance companies to charge them five times as much as they charged them before. under this new legislation that the house just passed and i was proud to vote no on that bill. the other thing it does, too, that i hear from fellow floridians about, women, it zeros out planned parenthood for the first year. that takes out mammograms and other cancer screenings. it s a horrible idea. and the most appalling part of this bill, the most merciless part of the bill, is how it affects the poor and disabled in our country and throughout, obviously, florida, too. it makes it such that $880 billion will be take away from the poor and the elderly for their health care and the disabled. the way it does that is through medicaid. medicaid is the program, as you know, that provides health care for the poor and health care for the disabled, also.
mike, about what we expect to see from today s meeting on health care. just the start, right? that s right. hallie. actually, this group has been a smaller group that s been meeting informally led by ted cruz over the last few weeks. this is the first meeting of the expanded group announced by mitch mcconnell just after the tumultuous house vote last week. you see there are 13 members. notably all male, all white, with the exception of ted cruz, a hispanic american. on the docket for the first meeting led by mitch mcconnell and the republican leadership, john corner, john thune and others is medicaid. this is a touchy issue. turns out the medicaid expansion within obamacare has turned out to be quite popular even in the red states, even those led by republican governors. rob portman, who is on the group, from ohio, concerned about the $880 billion cut slated to occur in medicaid if the house bill were to become law which nobody is expecting right now. but front and center on the agen
but they were true to what president keptdy defined in his book as a congressional profile in courage, the desire to maintain a reputation for integrity that is stronger than a desire to maintain office. joining us now, andy slafity, the former acting administrator for the services for medicaid and medicare under the obama administration. i want to ask you about what congressman blum said. if you are on medicaid, nothing worry about, nothing is changing in medicaid. can you explain to me how you do massive billions of dollars of cuts in medicaid and nothing changes in medicaid? yeah, i think that s probably going to go down as one of the toughest stretches for them to cover, $880 billion is being cut are the medicaid program. that s 25%. et cetera a hard to imagine how a program that takes care of half the births in this country and half the long term care in