‘Only In Washington D.C. Is An Increase A Cut’: Paul Gosar Dismisses Medicaid Cut Concerns

During a House Oversight Committee hearing last week, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) spoke about the future of Medicaid.

Transcript

00:00I guess Paul goes there as another.

00:04Yeah, Dr. Carson.

00:06I want to give you ample time to come back at something that was said about Medicaid, slashing Medicaid.

00:11Only in Washington, D.C. is cutting an increase a cut.

00:17You know, so one of the core tenets of Obamacare was to expand Medicaid, was it not?

00:22And during Biden's term, we saw a 60-plus percent increase in the number of people that were placed on Medicaid.

00:31Key here is placed.

00:33Would you agree?

00:34Yes.

00:34So part of the problem here is that when you're looking at debt service of $36 trillion,

00:41and Mr. Edwards, thank you again from Cato from the bottom of my heart for looking at that national emergencies,

00:46you've got to do some hard choices.

00:49Now, if you're just going to cap those rates, let's just say you're going to cap them as inflated as they are,

00:55you increase it by the medical inflationary aspect, which is twice what normal inflation is,

01:01sounds to me like that would be something that could work.

01:04Would you agree?

01:05I'd agree.

01:07But I also would bring up the point that we spend over $13,000 per capita per year on health care in this country.

01:16That's more than most concierge practices costs.

01:20So obviously there's a lot of money going places where it doesn't need to be going.

01:24What do you need?

01:25You need a patient and you need a health care provider.

01:27Along comes the middleman to facilitate, becomes the principal entity,

01:31sucking out most of the money out of the system, and people are not getting the care that they need.

01:36We need some major reforms there.

01:38Oh, I'm glad you said that because, you know, it's now cool to eat well.

01:42You know, maybe when Mrs. Obama was around when she wanted to eat well, it wasn't cool.

01:47But it's cool now to eat real good food.

01:50And so we ought to be pushing it as a pay-to-play to pay for well health.

01:56I appreciate how you go back.