Below are four quotes from the interview.
1. On Medicaid expansion: “I think we need a solution for low-income, non-disabled Americans. We need a solution for them. They need help paying for their healthcare coverage. I question, though, whether Medicaid is the best vehicle because Medicaid really was designed for aged, blind, disabled, pregnant women and poor children.”
2. On CBO’s estimate that 23 million people would lose coverage under the House-approved American Health Care Act: “I think the CBO numbers have historically been problematic, but more importantly what we’re talking about is the House version of the bill. I’ve been working with a lot of the senators. We want to make sure that the president’s core principles are incorporated into the final version. And so I think what’s more important is what the Senate comes up with, and looking at that and looking at the estimates of that. But really the House version [of the AHCA] is something that’s outdated at this point.”
3. On whether the ACA is “on the verge of collapsing”: “It really is. Since I’ve come to the administration, every day we’re hearing reports of insurers leaving. We’re hearing about double-digit [premium] increases. Recently we heard about the SHOP [Small Business Health Options Program] exchanges for small businesses, and less than a tenth of small businesses were actually using this. Our co-op programs, these were government-funded insurance programs that we had, even those are falling apart. Eighteen out of 23 have gone out of business. So everywhere we turn the program is falling apart.”
4. On where to place blame if ACA insurance exchanges collapse: “I think right now if we look at it, this is all because of the Affordable Care Act. I mean, the individual market was working much better than it is now, so this is all the impact of the Affordable Care Act.”
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