H. Con. Res. 14

Floor Speech

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Ms. SLOTKIN. Thank you, Senator.

I mean, I think what we are all here talking about into the dead of night is this idea of whom we want to be as a nation when it comes to providing healthcare.

Do we believe that the greatest country in the world should be able to treat the people who need help in our country or are we OK with the poorest among us, the weakest among us--those who are disabled, those who are elderly, those who are children--just not having access to care?

As the Senator said, when you look around at the math--right?--this isn't a political statement. The math of needing to find $880 billion with a ``b''--the math just doesn't work without gutting Medicaid. I think it is important to understand, at least in my State, that this isn't just about people who have Medicaid as their primary insurance, right? We have 10 million people in Michigan, and 2.6 million people are on Medicaid. The vast majority are children, right? They are people who can't live up to work requirements, people who just happen to be young, people who happen to be born where they were born. Thirty-seven percent of all of our births in Michigan are handled and covered by Medicaid, and two out of every three of nursing home elderly are covered by Medicaid. So it is not just about the people who are receiving direct care; it is about what Medicaid reimburses in funds.

It is the idea that 65 percent of our nursing homes could potentially go under if they don't get this funding. It is the idea that our rural hospitals from Hillsdale to Marquette, MI, have come to see me, and they say: Look, this is--we are not Democrats; we are conservative people, but if you take away this reimbursement, we will collapse. They were already suffering after COVID, and they are barely hanging on. So access to rural hospitals is something we are deeply, deeply worried about.

I think the bigger question is, Who do we believe we are, and do we have a commitment to serve and protect and provide basic healthcare to people in our States?

Now, you mentioned this, but I think it is important to realize that, with a number that big, we are not just talking about Medicaid. There is a real risk of Medicare Part D being touched--the prescription drug piece of that--and the Affordable Care Act, which so many people depend on, the many, many people being cut off from that at the end of the year. The math just doesn't work.

So what we are really talking about is, in the State of Michigan and in the United States, the potential for either people to lose their coverage or to have the price of their coverage go up because everyone who is talking about these Medicaid cuts back home has also mentioned, by the way, if we don't get the Medicaid reimbursement at our hospital, I am just going to charge more to the people who have insurance. There are going to be more people in my ER. I am going to have to pass that expensive cost off to customers who do have health insurance.

So it is just important to understand the full spectrum of what we are talking about here. Now, I am sure you have heard a ton of personal stories, right? It is important to understand that we are giving a talk on the Senate floor, and we are talking about numbers, but at the end of the day, these are human beings, and I am sure your phones are as flooded as mine are with people who want to tell their personal stories.

I will say, for me, it feels like ``Groundhog Day'' because I decided to run in 2018 for the very issue of healthcare because I happened to live through my mother getting stage IV ovarian cancer without having insurance. She had no insurance.

That first month of that terminal diagnosis, where you are desperate to get her tests and coverage and some kind of emergency surgery, you are using your credit cards, you are doing whatever you can while you are just feeling completely lost that you know your mother is going to die. That feeling is the worst feeling I have ever experienced, and it is what we are proposing to millions of additional Americans by the end of this year.

I am sure you heard a lot of personal stories on your phones. I don't know if you want to walk through a couple of those stories, but I think it is important to make it a human issue, not just a numbers issue.

Ms. CORTEZ MASTO. That is right. And I thank my colleague from Michigan because it is true. I mean, I can tell you, in February, I spoke with Madison from Nevada. She has stiff-person syndrome. This is the disease that impacts all her muscles and her breathing, and she has had to be on a ventilator seven times. She wouldn't be here today without Medicaid, which provides her with home healthcare.

Madison's sister Trisha was with her that day when she had to deal with such--and this is trauma. Healthcare is trauma in somebody's life. If Madison's Medicaid coverage ends, she would have to go live with her sister and depend on her for care. She would be forced to move away from her community and her whole life. Madison needs, really, Medicaid to live her life to the fullest.

Like my colleague from Michigan says, these are real people that will be impacted. And I know she is seeing the same.

I do want to pose for her this thought, though, that it is not just the individuals. We know there is real-life impact, and we see it. We hear it in our offices. We are getting those calls. We are meeting with individuals. We know them. We know them. They are our neighbors. They are our friends. We know them when we are home.

Here is what people forget, though. I know in Nevada we already don't have enough providers in Medicaid. We don't have enough providers in the program to begin with.

Expanding the number of healthcare providers in Nevada really has been a priority of mine. That is why I am leading legislation-- bipartisan legislation--with my colleague Senator Cassidy from Louisiana to support graduate medical education programs.

But here is the deal: If Medicaid funding in Nevada is cut, not only will those rural health clinics close that I talked about, but here is the thing people forget: We would have fewer providers because they would not be incentivized to come to my State and treat patients. They are going to figure out where they can go and still survive. Remember, our providers have still to survive and make a living, and they want to treat patients. So we are going to have a provider issue in my State.

I don't know if that is an issue for Michigan, but it is something that goes hand in hand with Medicaid cuts because I hear from my providers as well.

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Ms. SLOTKIN. Yes. We talked about rural hospitals. I think, again, even if you are not on Medicaid, you have never signed up, you have never been in a low point in your life where you have needed a bridge, you have never had a child with a disability, you have just never touched the system, I guarantee you the hospitals that you depend on, the clinics that you depend on, the nursing homes that you depend on for your mom, your dad are dependent on Medicaid. I guarantee it.

And what we are hearing from our rural hospitals is: Look, we are the only hospital in 3 hours where you can get care. If we go, where do our people go? Where do we tell them to go?

If you are delivering a baby and you have to come off the Upper Peninsula into the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, there is just no way that we can function that way. So it is not just about, as you say, individuals--although, those stories are striking--it is about access to care for everybody.

I was talking to a doctor from the Lansing Care Free Medical Clinic. It is completely Medicaid covered. It is the folks who are left out of the system. He will just close. We will have clinics just close. So I think we are talking about something that, again, comes to the heart of who we are as a community.

I will also just say, I think it is important to put a warning label on it, and then I will turn it to you to maybe finish out.

There is a lot of magic math going on right now on the other side of that.

How do you take a group of people who both want to cut Medicaid in a devastating way, want to cut other healthcare in a devastating way, and match them up with a bunch of people who say, ``I can't,'' colleagues on the other side of the aisle who say, ``I can't accept cuts like that''? How do you balance two completely different factions in the same party? And it happens. Right?

What, normally, we would see is tough choices being made, right? Either the other side of the aisle is going to acknowledge we have to make these devastating cuts, or they are not going to cut them. But what we see now is that third secret option, which is magic math, which is: We are going to tell you we are not cutting anything, but we are going to quietly make the math just work so that we are actually cutting all these things, we are able to reap the benefits, or we push those cuts out to the outyears. So you don't notice them today, but maybe later, maybe after other elections, you are going to feel those Medicaid cuts.

So I guess my big warning label on the whole story here is that there is magic math going on from beginning to end on this package.

And don't be fooled. They are coming for your healthcare. You are either going to be paying more, or you are going to lose your coverage. That is just a fact based on the math that they put out publicly and voted on today.

So I thank my colleague for the opportunity to do my first colloquy. I didn't know this was a thing that we could do. Thank you for giving me that opportunity, and I will let you finish us out.

Ms. CORTEZ MASTO. Thank you, the great Senator from Michigan.

Let me say, I am so pleased that she brought this up because it is a gimmick. It is a gimmick that they are playing right now that somehow the $7 trillion in tax cuts that they want to give to billionaires is not going to add to our deficit or debt.

Remember, these are the Republicans, the party of fiscal responsibility, and it is not going to add to our deficit or our debt.

This is the perfect example. I have read this in the papers--a perfect example of what this means. This is like you are a parent, and you have put your daughter through college for 4 years. She comes home, and she says: Oh, well, you are already paying for it. So it is not really an additional cost for you. So I am just going to stay home and not work, and you just continue to pay the same amount that you were paying for college, and I will just live off of that. That was a great example one of our papers put out--a journalist put out--because that is exactly what the Republicans are trying to do here. This is it.

And, remember, they are next going to come and try to lift the debt ceiling--more debt--to pay for this. This is the party of fiscal responsibility--think about this--at a time when our economy is already in a free fall because of these crazy tariffs.

And, by the way, if you care about your retirement and your 401(k), you are watching that stock market because that is in free fall. That is what this administration, that is what these Republicans are bringing you.

But, remember, when they started, they got handed an economy from the previous administration that was going strong. They had just come out of a pandemic and were trying to turn everything around. Was it perfect? No. But we were working on addressing the challenges facing this country.

I know. I know my colleague from Michigan knows this. Our family's prices are too high. Costs are high. We have got to focus on them. We have to lower those costs. These tax cuts should be about them, more money in their pocket.

We started doing that around healthcare, capping the cost of insulin, making sure that those Big Pharma companies would negotiate with us, and we can keep those prescription drugs down. We started that process. We have more to do. I know that.

But when President Trump came into office, the first thing he said was he was going to lower those costs for our families. That is not his priority, and that is not what he is doing. And that is why we have to shine a light on this.

That is why I am so proud of my colleagues for standing up and making sure the American public knows that they are coming after your healthcare, and they are coming after your retirement, and they are coming after you so that they can pay for these tax cuts for billionaires.

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