'Here Are The Facts': Raphael Warnock Disputes Republican Talking Point On Medicaid

3 days ago

At a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) spoke about the nomination of Dr. Oz to run CMS.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Long before I came to the Senate, I was fighting for my

00:06state to expand Medicaid, which would give an estimated 600,000 Georgians access to affordable

00:14health care. But here we are, 15 years almost to the day of the Affordable Care Act being

00:21signed into law, and still Georgia has not expanded Medicaid. Georgia continues to deny

00:29its citizens access to this program that's being supported by the taxpaying Georgians.

00:38To make matters worse, now Washington Republicans have proposed to gut almost $900 billion from

00:45Medicaid to give millionaires and billionaires an additional tax cut, potentially kicking

00:51millions of Americans off of their health care insurance. Medicaid covers almost 40

00:57million children across the country, 2 in 5 children in Georgia, 1 in 10 veterans, 63

01:06percent of seniors in nursing homes. Medicaid also supports one-fifth of all hospital spending,

01:14especially in communities without many hospital options. Washington Republicans and Dr. Oz

01:20say they want to make Medicaid more efficient by requiring people who get their health insurance

01:26through Medicaid to fill out government paperwork each month to prove that they are working.

01:32Here are the facts. Here are the facts. Nearly all adults enrolled in Medicaid are either

01:39working, in school, or are caregivers. By and large, if they can work, they do work.

01:47I know that may be hard to believe in a country that increasingly maligns poor people for

01:52being poor, but by and large, these folks are already working, or they're caregivers,

01:56or they're students. They are construction workers. They are restaurant servers and mechanics.

02:01They're doing exactly what Dr. Oz and Washington Republicans want them to do, but here's the

02:07deal. Republicans need a whole lot of money to pay for their tax cuts for the wealthiest

02:12among us, and they know if you give people enough bureaucratic hoops to jump through,

02:17then enough working people will get tripped up by the red tape and lose their health care.

02:22And so that's the plan. Less money spent on a working mom's cancer treatment because she

02:29didn't fill out the right form every month by the right deadline, so you have more money

02:37for billionaire tax cuts. We know this because I live in Georgia. Georgia is the only state

02:43with work reporting requirements in its Medicaid program, and all of this program has to show

02:49for itself. Five years later, it's 6,500 people enrolled. We've got nearly 600,000 Georgians

02:57who are in the Medicaid gap. The governor's program has enrolled a whopping 6,500 people.

03:05Mr. Chair, I know I'm running out of time, but as I close, and nobody believes a Baptist

03:10preacher when he says outside close. Let me be really clear that I'm voting against

03:14Dr. Oz. I think he is knowledgeable, certainly more knowledgeable than Secretary Kennedy

03:21about the program that he's tasked to lead, but we've got to take seriously the needs

03:28of millions of Americans who will lose their health care, and so I'm voting no for his

03:32nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

'Here Are The Facts': Raphael Warnock Disputes Republican Talking Point On Medicaid

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