Do More With Less
by digby
Here's Eric Cantor talking about the necessity of kicking your grandmother out of her nursing home to move in with you. (You'd better get that nursing degree --- you're going to need it.)
CANTOR: We are in a situation where we have a safety net in place in this country for people who frankly don’t need one. We have to focus on making sure we have a safety net for those who need it.
WALLACE: The Medicaid people — you’re going to cut that by $750 billion.
CANTOR: The medicaid reductions are off the baseline. so what we’re saying is allow states to have the flexibility to deal with their populations, their indigent populations and the healthcare needs the way they know how to deal with them. Not to impose some mandate from a bureaucrat in Washington.
WALLACE: But you are giving them less money to do it.
CANTOR: In terms of the baseline, that is correct…What we’re saying is there is so much imposition of a mandate that doesn’t relate to the actual quality of care. We believe if you put in place the mechanism that allow for personal choice as far as Medicare is concerned, as well as the programs in Medicaid, that we can actually get to a better resolve and and do what most Americans are learning how to do, which is to do more with less.
You see, it's the spending mandate that's causing the low quality of care. If states have less money to work with the poor will be much better off. Isn't that how it works in your family? Isn't your life always improved when you lose income? In fact, I think the Republicans have come upon an excellent new theme: The new American Dream ---doing more with less!
*In case you were wondering, millions of elderly who are in nursing homes are on both programs. With nursing homes costing around 150 bucks a day, it's a rare middle class senior who needs to be in one who doesn't end up a pauper on Medicaid. It's how many of us check out in this country. And needless to say, the pernicious political and policy effects of turning it into block grants so that Governors Walker and Kasich can do all the dirty work of punishing the poor while touting their fiscal rectitude is obvious.
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