Grassley on Health Care
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley talked health care with The Takeaway’s John Hockenberry this morning, and this is a 10 minute conversation you should hear.
In fact, some is worth quoting from the transcript:
Senator Charles Grassley: Let me say where he’s partly right, in regard to that bill, unlike the bill Senator Baucus and I are working on, and don’t forget, we’re working toward the same end, eventually these two bills are going to come together on the Senate floor. The $1.6 trillion… that probably deserves some criticism, not because it’s not a legitimate part of the process. Our goal is to cover about 50 million people who don’t have health insurance and make it affordable for them.
John Hockenberry: There you go.
Senator Charles Grassley: And for $1.6 trillion they were only covering 16 million of the people, about one third. So it wasn’t getting the job done at a high price tag. That’s what really made that approach laughable.
John Hockenberry: So, Senator, price tag aside, your priority is to get everyone covered more than it is exclusively to keep the bill down.
Senator Charles Grassley: Well, it’s a little bit of both. But our goal…you’ve got to have good policy. Good policy is the best politics, you have to understand that. A lot of people in Washington think the best politics is the way to get the best policy, I don’t believe that.
There’s a lot of light in this exchange, lots of substance, and a clear sense of what one of the most powerful, and thoughtful Republicans on the Hill thinks about the direction of the health care debate.
Highly recommended. Listen
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norris hall
