more, i can afford it. younger people, you re going to have to wait until bit longer to retire because we re living so much longer. but we ll give you decades to get there. as to medicaid, make it work. instead of running to the emergency room when you have a headache or a cold under medicaid and sending all of us the bill, let that medicaid patient into a family physician network where they can get treated, better for them, better for you. all i can say is if you do nothing, we just play like nothing is going to change unless somebody makes it change, medicaid is unsustainable. we don t cut a dime out of medicaid. we slow the growth. eight years from now we give the state the flexible they don t have today. here is my bet. deal do a better job with the money than the obamacare guy or gal. senator, thank you. let me just say two things. all of us are and should be concerned approximate the deficit and the national debt we
have. these guys, though, are going to support a tax proposal which over a ten-year period would repeal the estate tax and give $269 billion in tax breaks to the top two tenths of 1%. that to me is not an effective way to deal with the deficit. second of all, let me read directly from the cbo report that came out today. and i would disagree with senator cassidy s interpretation. they are cutting a trillion dollars. all told federal spending on medicaid would be reduced by about a trillion dollars over the 2017, 2026 period under the lemgts lags and the program would cover millions fewer enrollees. what that means in terms of the question you raise, we ve got a real issue in new hampshire. we ve got one in vermont. this is a national tragedy. when you cut back on medicaid and you don t get money to the states for prevention and for
secondly, as regards this flexible block grant, some of that money can be used toll whittle down waiting lists for those who have disabilities. but it isn t washington telling your state to do it. it is the state deciding to because the state realizes it has a need with opioids or realizes it has a back kind of backlog of folks going into disability. so we ensure that you continue that access. we give the state the flexibility to cut down that waiting list. we think the state knows better than the federal government or a single payor how to take care of you. senator. thanks for your story. and i think you know you re not alone. 40 pearls of people on with disabilities get their insurance through medicaid. that s a fact. that s how they get their health care. and what this bill does is cut medicaid, and that s why all the major disability groups are opposed to this bill. it is a pre-existing condition. i remember on fourth of july walking in parades on the iron
just discussed that are led by republican senator alexander of tennessee, democrat senator patty murray of washington. we ve got a budge of ideas. the exact kind of things senator mccain has asked us to do. and then you add to that the other work that needs to be done and that is creating a less expensive option for people to buy into like yourself. one way to do it would be senator mccaskill s idea. snore idea would be senator shots. we have been working together on an option that you can buy into for medicaid that s a very efficiently run program. that s a bill that s going to come out in the next month or so. and then senator murphy of kt is also working on one with medicare. these are options. i m tired of hearing about this false choice. the bill that s on the floor right now or one other bill. and senator sanders and i have the same goals here and that is to bring more affordable care to the people of this country, but
let s reiterate what the cbo just said. trillion dollars in cuts let me finish. trillion dollars in cuts to medicaid, now, this is preliminary because you keep changing the plan every day and cbo has not had the time to do the kind of thorough study that the american people want us to do, but there have been numerous, numerous studies out there that suggest that your plan will throw over 30 million people off of the health insurance they currently have. and let s once again from a human point of view we ve heard some of that discussion tonight understand what it means when people who are struggling with cancer, heart disease, diabetes suddenly get the word that our legislation passed and they lose the health insurance they have. that is their lifeline for literally staying alive. our job as a humane society is to do a couple of things. it s not to throw 30 million people off of health insurance.