When pressed during an interview on ABC’s This Week, Trump HHS Secretary Tom Price admitted that Obamacare (ACA) helps people, which is the opposite of the Republican argument that Obamacare is a collapsing disaster.
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Transcript via ABC’s This Week:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Democrats don’t seem very willing right now. Senator Rand Paul is coming right up. He says you should just do a clean repeal like you did in 2015 and then have a wide-open debate on how to replace Obamacare.
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What’s wrong with that proposal?
PRICE: Because that — what that does is place vulnerable people at risk, and that’s not something that the president’s willing to do, it’s not something that he said he would do. Certainly what he has said is that repeal and replace need to occur essentially at the same time, concurrently, and that’s what we’re going — that’s what we’re moving forward within this first phase.
Again, the second phase, the administrative changes; the third phase, the other pieces of legislation — they’re being worked on literally as we speak. And if you look at the plan in its entirety, I think that Senator Paul would have to admit that it includes the vast majority of the kinds of things that he and others have been talking about as being important: to have a health care financing and delivery system that works for patients.
The problem is that Obamacare can’t be both collapsing and helping people at the same time. Republicans have sold the idea that Obamacare was a disaster that was collapsing in on itself to their supporters for years, but now that they have to come up with a replacement, Republicans have changed their tune and are claiming that they have to repeal and replace at the same time, or people will be hurt.
If Obamacare is bad for people, their lives would be immediately improved by repealing the law.
Price’s answer was an admission that Republicans have been lying this whole time. Obamacare does help people, and if the GOP repeals the bill and doesn’t replace it, millions of Americans will be harmed.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
