we ve made some strides. included in it are some major changes to medicaid that would begin to bend the cost curve but we do have some changes that we d like to make. our goal isn t just to pass something, it s to pass something which long term is the right thing to do. we d like to be able to provide insurance coverage for as many people as possible, but we d also like to make sure we re not simply dumping things on states, whether they did not expand or if they did expand. and part of that is equalizing what each state could expect to receive in terms of federal participation in the medicaid program over a longer period of time. that s no easy to do or it would have been done already. i want to read you a critique from the health care bill. you re going to assume it s coming from somebody from the left but it comes from a conservative columnist from the post. he writes let s be clear, the investment tax and medicare surcharge on obamacare are a drag on economic growth but if
simply going to continue to try to twist arms and to use the tactic they have been using all the way along which is to argue to republicans look, you promised you were going to do this, you better deliver or it s going to be a huge problem for you. i think you laid out pretty well the problems here is that the president made certain promises about the entitlement programs that are quite frankly at odds with what republicans in washington have been wanting to do for a really long time. in many ways, you have heard critics of this bill say this is just a medicaid reform bill. reforming entitlements and slowing the cost curve on government spending, those are long decades-old priorities for mitch mcconnell here in the senate. they are at odds with what president trump said on the campaign trail. have you g you have gotten those things all tied up together because of course the president did run in theory on repealing and replacing obamacare. he has been repeatedly saying obamacare is dead
so there s toomey. and again, tom price, hhs secretary, said we would not have individuals lose coverage they want for themselves and their family. does this have echoes of you can keep your doctor, and can they back up those claims based on your read of the senate bill? yeah. like you it does have echoes of you can keep your doctor. i was also thinking it has echoes of republicans accusing democrats of cutting medicare back when they passed obamacare. you know, they were trying to carve out, to control the cost curve and make medicare cheaper going forward. now it s medicaid, and it s democrats accusing republicans. so the shoe s kind of on the other foot there. but it it s hard to figure out exactly how you ensure the same number of people, and get the same level of coverage if you re carving this much money out of the program. so it is, i think, a fundamental restructuring. that s what s interesting here. a fundamental restructuring of medicaid. it would change the way it
south where we re from, are disproportionately on medicaid. if i m a conservative on the floor and i m going to go out and vote for my party s bill, it had better give me something i can go back to my district. listen, i know this is tough medicine and not everybody is going to be helped by this bill, but this is what the bill does. it s actually it brings in free market forces and most importantly it lowers the cost curve for our health care industry over the next 20 years and stops us from becoming bankrupt. this bill doesn t do that. it doesn t bring in free market forces, so even as a conservative where i might be willing to make some really tough calls on one side, if i get something back on the other, this bill doesn t even do that. it doesn t make the system better. we still careen towards bankruptcy. all it does is transfers wealth, about a trillion dollars in wealth from the poor to the
than later. this is incredibly important. why can t we figure out how to do this in a bipartisan way. that s what we re urging. i m on the health care committee. this the third time. you had clinton s efforts in 93, 94, obama s efforts in 2009 and 2010. we had hearings. so much of that bill was republican amendments. it s one-sixth of the economy. why can t republicans and democrats get together and say, let s figure this out together? what is the problem? ask mitch mcconnell. it s not just mitch mcconnell s fault. it is right now. i m talking about since 93. if you believe it s just the republicans fault, you can say that. i m just curious. it s frustrating. it s one-sixth of the economy. we ve got to get the cost curve down. you can t overstate to me the importance of health care. when i started running in 08, i