Sen. Mullin on the Trump Bill Delays: We’re Trying to Reduce Fraud and Waste in Medicare Without Disrupting Healthcare for Rural Hospitals

RUSH EXCERPT:
MULLIN: "Yeah, there isn‘t as much work as you think. 85% of the bill that the house sent over were, were, were pretty much taking. It‘s the 15% that we‘re still negotiating. And the parliamentarian had kicked out some things. You know, we had a very narrow window for your listeners. The Byrd rule, as we call the bird bath, it can only deal with two things. We can only deal with mandatory spending and taxes. So basically revenue. So if anything is perceived to be policy and doesn‘t fit inside those windows, then the parliamentarian will remove the house. Doesn‘t have to apply by that. The Senate does. So taking that out does a couple of things. One, when they took out some of the stuff that the house sent over because as I said, they don‘t have to deal with the Byrd rule. It the deficit reduction that we‘re trying to get our target number is around $1.6 trillion in in reducing deficit spending, which will be the most deficit reduction spending that any Congress has ever taken on it. That‘s put us in a deficit, because about $250 billion I‘m using rough numbers here. These are round numbers but roughly around $250 billion was removed. So we‘ve got to make that up. And how you start looking at it, you really got to start looking at the real the fraud and the waste that‘s in Medicare or in Medicaid. And and seeing how you can do that without disrupting health care for especially rural hospitals. I‘m very rural, you know, and so rural where I‘ve lived my whole life."

TAPPER: "Tulsa is the big city to you."

MULLIN: "Yeah, tahlequah is a big city to us for everybody‘s laughing is from Oklahoma. To understand that one. But so we don‘t want to do that. And plus rural hospitals are the lifeblood of a lot of the counties. I mean, not only are the largest employer, but you lose your county hospital, your worker‘s comp for manufacturing and everything."