As you already know, we are continuing to work on reaching an agreement that will involve continued discussions until the end of the week and we will not be returning to the bill on the floor of the senate a couple of weeks after this week, but we made good progress. The president got an opportunity to hear from the various members who have concerns about market reforms and the medicaid, the future of medicaid and medicaid expansion. I think the media was very helpful. One thing i would say is that i think everybody around the table is interested in getting an outcome because we know the status quo is simply unacceptable, unsustainable and no action is not an option. Critics say the longer you wait, the harder its going to be to pass a health care bill. Senator mcconnell i dont think so. Certainly we have spent a lot of time on this over the last seven years and our members are increasingly more familiar. Its a very complicated subject. I had hoped as you know that we could have gotten
Senate plan. That is what the Congressional Budget Office projects. Explain how they, up with that number and what it means in the 10 years the cbo report covers. Guest they have a collocated and sophisticated peter model. Sophisticated computer model. They will offset the gains and losses, they ended up with 15 million you are people would e medicaid after 10 years 50 million fewer people would have medicaid after 10 years. There would be a lot of constraints on medicaid from the federal government. It would be capped for the first time. States would get less money. There would be fewer people. Help would go further down the income scale. The insurance they could buy would be less generous. People would not find it valuable to spend money for insurance that they would not be able to use because their deductibles and outofpocket spending would be so high. Those are the big top lines. This is compared to current law. The number with the insurance would double. The cbo did not like down
I want to welcome you all here today to talk about one of the most important issues that affects every state in the country, every community in the country, every neighborhood in the country, and that is the Opioid Epidemic that runs across this wonderful country of ours. This wonderful country of ours. I am charlie baker, the governor of massachusetts and vice chair of the ngas health and Human Services committee and i am especially pleased to be joined today by governor roy cooper from North Carolina, who i served with on the president s commission on opioid addiction, and where is our host, governor raimondo. Is she here . She is late to her own party. Gina will be joining us later along with roy along with our other distinguished speakers to talk about this Opioid Epidemic which is a pertinent and relevant issue for all of us. The Opioid Epidemic is claiming the lives of an estimated 90 americans a day. Im not the first person to make that mistake. In massachusetts, we had about 20
Importance that should he be confirmed, that we are going to expect from the standpoint of the russia investigation the cooperation, to work with the investigation and terms of access to materials, access to information, but we obviously deconflict with investigator mueller. It is important we have a strong working relationship with christopher wray. In public just as testimony yesterday that he would be independent and not abide political interference. It is an unfortunate fact that 2017 we have to get these kind of assurances since we have seen this administration and president in particular ask for the type of loyalty oaths from director comey and reports of similar efforts to undermine the investigation in terms of other conversations. I feel comfortable with the assurances i received and i look forward to actually supporting mr. Wray when his nomination comes to the floor. I also raised another item of importance, and perhaps more parochial to the region, but over the last number