Ken Cuccinelli channeled TV host Dr. Phil while making comments critiquing Medicare and Medicaid at a 2012 tea party rally on Capitol Hill. Cuccinelli used the programs as part of a larger attack on Obamacare.
"We have had one answer in federal government to every challenge in health care for 47 years, and that's more government," Cuccinelli said. "It goes back to beginning of Medicaid, Medicare, and as Dr. Phil would say, 'How's that working out for 'ya?'"
"We need to go the other way," Cuccinelli continued. "We need to move back toward a free market. We don't have a free market in health care. We need to connect customers up with the cost of care. And to drive innovation that way. And we're moving the other way with the federal health care bill. In Virginia we want to have our own opportunity to control our own destiny, control our own market. And this bill gets in the way of all of that."
The Virginia attorney general previously argued in his bookThe Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty that programs like Medicaid and Medicare were used as "one of politicians' favorite ways to increase their power," saying the programs "make people dependent on government. And once people are dependent, they feel they can't afford to have the programs taken away, no matter how inefficient, poorly run, or costly to the rest of society."
The full video of Cuccinelli's 2012 interview has been embedded below:
