or losing our beautiful son were enough to get me to stop using. i ended in jail and eventually got treatment through new hampshire s drug court program which was 100% paid for my medicaid expansion. if medicaid was cut health really great question. number one, congratulations on overcoming something that is just incredible. we re all one pill away. you don t know until you take the first pill. it s not a character problem. it s just the body. you never know if you get hurt and you take a pill. eve just got to deal with it, but it s not medicaid expansion that saved you. it was somebody who knew what they were doing who walked you through how to get better. let s talk about $20 trillion of debt. let s talk about medicaid. medicaid medicare, social security and interest on the debt is going to consume all the
money you send in the future in taxes. do you care about the debt? do you care about her? can we do both? so here is what i would say about medicaid. medicaid is growing twice as fast as health care in other areas. i want to make sure that medicaid is sustainable and affordable. what do we do to save a trillion dollars? we lower the inflation rate eight years from now. so your state of new hampshire is going to have the money to design programs that would help your family. they re going to get money that a bur accurate would have gotten in d.c., their share of the 1.2 trillion and they can take 20 pearls of that to spend on the medicaid that they want to. they can take money in the second block grant and go well beyond where medicaid would let them go. they re going to have more money to help people like you. and here is what i bet. they ll do a better job than the guy or the gal running obamacare. so if you want to save the country from going bankrupt, we need to get medicare on a sus
social security and interest on the debt. somebody needs to deal with this. i choose to be that somebody. medicaid is highly inefficient. we need it match it up not cut it and give people the flexibility to run it better than they have today. all i can tell you about this fight, it s just beginning and to my friends on the other side, every group you cited told you that obamacare would work. every insurance company against this bill and if i were them i d be against it too because we take money from them and we give it to the state government to help you. and all these other organizations, you don t think they ll have a voice in your state? you don t think somebody in your state will listen to them? this is not about this is not about caring. this is about changing things while we still have a chance, because ten years from now if we don t fix it today, it s going to collapse, and god help us
treatment, there is nobody who doubts but that a lot more people are going to die and not get the care that they need. so if we are concerned about the opioid epidemic, the idea of cutting a trillion dollars from medicaid, which is one of the major sources of funding at a local level to deal with the opioid epidemic is absolutely crazy. thank you, senator. i want to stay on the issue of medicare but not medicaid expansion. medicaid currently enshurz roughly one in five americans including horror income americans. republicans have been advocating to reduce federal funding for the program which would force states to make some decisions on their own. woman from maryland has a question for senator cassidy. senator cassidy, is medicaid funding gets shifted to the states and they cap and cut medicaid optional services like home and community based assistance which currently allow me to live and thrive
independently will be first on the chopping block. how will you ensure that disabled americans and seniors get the life essential care they need, especially when many states already have long wait lists and an increased need as baby boomers age? [applause] there is a section in our bill again, i started this as a physician. i am first a doctor. i just the young lady who just spoke, i used to treat patients in a women s prison and in a men s prison. i understand that scourge of opioid addiction. we preserve mental health parity. the resources will be there. sure, its not from medicaid. it s in the flexible block frant, but the money would be there if your state needs it. as regards this, on page 100 of our bill, there s a section. it says ensuring continued access to home based and community services. that is a whole section of our bill to ensure that stays.