Richard Neal vows battle to keep Medicare

Dec. 07--WASHINGTON -- Bay State U.S. Rep. Richard Neal -- set to assume the top Democratic seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and a top foe of Speaker Paul Ryan's plan to overhaul Medicare -- says Democrats need to rebut Republicans by focusing on the issue that dominated the election: the economy.

"The people of Massachusetts should understand, not only is Medicare great health care, but also it's a huge employer in Massachusetts," Neal told the Herald in an interview yesterday, vowing to oppose Ryan's plan to convert the single-payer retirement health program into a "premium support" system.

Under Ryan's plan, retirees could enroll in private health plans with a predetermined government contribution. Neal called it a "voucher" program that would be a job killer in Massachusetts and other states with strong hospital-based economies.

"There are very few, if any, hospitals in the state that don't receive at least half their revenue from Medicare," Neal said.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told reporters that repealing Obamacare was at the top of the GOP's agenda.

"The Obamacare repeal resolution will be the first item up in the new year," McConnell said.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the incoming top Democrat in the Senate, fired back.

"Mitch McConnell said they want to start repealing Obamacare the first week? Bring it on!" Schumer said.

"They have nothing to put in its place, and believe me, just repealing Obamacare ... will cause huge calamity from one end of America to the other," Schumer said. "They don't know what to do. They are like a dog that caught the bus."

Neal agreed with that sentiment, saying Republicans will repeal Obamacare at their own peril.

"My hunch is that three years from now, you are going to be having the same conversation, and they are going to be talking about repealing," Neal said, noting the popularity of some Obamacare components, such as allowing Americans with pre-existing illnesses to get insurance.

"Politics and talking points are getting people all worked up. We have to separate ourselves from emotions."

He compared Republicans' rhetoric on Obamacare to Democratic opposition to the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit program in the early 2000s.

"We opposed it because of the so-called doughnut hole," the gap in coverage between the initial coverage cap and the catastro-phic coverage threshold for new enrollees at the time.

But after the measure passed and Democrats won control of the House in 2006, "the first thing we did was we fixed Medicare Part D and we moved on. We didn't try to repeal it. We repaired it."

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