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cal04

(41,505 posts)
Wed Aug 22, 2012, 06:54 PM Aug 2012

Biden bemoans GOP Medicare plan in recession-ravaged Michigan

For Joe Biden, all politics is personal, from his relationships with past presidents to the little white lies his siblings told their ailing mother.

Campaigning Wednesday in famously recession-ravaged Michigan, Biden bemoaned the consequences of the GOP ticket's plans for Medicare and said that their proposed changes would exacerbate the sacrifices already made by families on behalf of their elderly relatives.

Noting that he and his siblings have been financially successful, the vice president offered the delicate details of his family members combining financial resources to care for mother Catherine "Jean" Biden, who died in 2010 at the age of 96.

"It was still a struggle to take care of all my mom's bills," he told a crowd of over a thousand at Renaissance High School. "We were able to do it, no complaint, it was an honor. But you know what it did, we had to lie to my mom and tell her, 'No honey, this is all covered by your Medicare, this is all covered by the sale of your home,' which it wasn't."

"Because do you know any parent who wants to be a burden for their children?" he added, arguing that the "voucherization" of Medicare proposed under the Ryan budget would further hurt the elderly's abilities to cover their own expenses.

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/22/13419282-biden-bemoans-gop-medicare-plan-in-recession-ravaged-michigan?lite

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