usually medicaid reimbursing the school system for the services that they re providing you. but why are they going after medicaid? this whole thing, in my view, is a big smoke screen. they want to get rid of obamacare but what they really are fixated upon is going after medicaid. the medicaid program doesn t have anything to do the core program with obamacare, but that s what they re going after and they are probably doing it because they can take all of these savings and make it part of their big tax cut plan that they re going to bring up next month. all right. senator tim kaine, thank you. absolutely. still to come, tom brokaw on what constitutes a scandal. an earthquake in mexico city claims over 200 lives and we ll go live to puerto rico where the entire island is dark and without power in the wake of hurricane maria. time s up, insufficient prenatal care. and administrative paperwork, your days of drowning people
doesn t cover insulin. i m a woman, i d like maternity care. we re going to write you a policy, it just doesn t cover ma teer maternt care. you ought to be able to get coverage that includes coverage for your condition but the waiver of essential health benefits allows states to write you a policy that doesn t even cover the condition that you have and that s why the bill flunks the kimmel test and everybody with a pre-existing condition is scared to death about what this bill would mean. i want to give you an argument which is that in order to get the waiver, the state has to certify that people have access to affordable care. that s what you saw senator cassidy talking about. do you think that essentially won t mean anything when implemented? chris hayes, a state would say that and then it would be up to tom price, who hates the affordable care act, who hates medicaid, who is against all of
these programs, it would be up to him to say, oh, yeah, i agree with you. you re fine. there s no protection. it s going to be a race to the bottom and the pre-existing condition argument is a slight of hand. they ll right you a policy but it doesn t have to cover the condition that you have. and that s why jimmy kimmel says you ve got to be kidding me. now we ll move to the second bad part of this bill. i want to ask you about another part of this. maybe this is what you re moving on to, which is about this strange interstate transfer of money. yeah. weird. it is weird. weird. although, you re in a sort of opposite position as someone, say, like rob portman. he s in ohio where they have medicaid expansion. ohio is going to be a net loser. you represent virginia which hasn t expanded and which has stands to gain essentially in fact, senator cassidy is shouting out virginia as a beneficiary of this bill. if you re going to get more money under this, why don t you
about 800,000 virginians could stand to lose coverage. again, just like the pre-existing condition thing, they are going through a lot of efforts to hide what is really happening and now let me get to the third part of the bill which is the worst part of it. they say this is repeal and replace obamacare but why go after medicaid? this is what they did in even the house didn t go after the base medicaid program but the senate did and this bill does, too. it puts caps on the medicaid program, the core medicaid program that existed before there was the affordable care act and those caps would take about $120 million out of medicaid and the number would grow in future years. why are they so fixed on trying to attack medicaid? in virginia and most places, 55 to 60% of the recipients of medicaid are children. if you need a wheelchair to go to school, it s medicaid that s paying the wheelchair and it s
we re going to write you a policy, it just doesn t cover maternity care. you ought to be able to get coverage that includes coverage for your condition but the waiver of essential health benefits allows states to write you a policy that doesn t even cover the condition that you have and that s why the bill flunks the kimmel test and everybody with a pre-existing condition is scared to death about what this bill would mean. i want to give you an argument which is that in order to get the waiver, the state has to certify that people have access to affordable care. that s what you saw senator cassidy talking about. do you think that essentially won t mean anything when implemented? chris hayes, a state would say that and then it would be up to tom price, who hates the affordable care act, who hates medicaid, who is against all of these programs, it would be up to him to say, oh, yeah, i agree with you. you re fine. there s no protection.