Secretary price and a lot of i alongtary price and with our entire administration and a lot of people in the senate and a lot of people in the house are committed to repealing and replacing this disastrous law with a Health Care Plan that lowers cost, expands choice, and ensures access for everyone. You represent the millions of americans who have seen that obamacare premiums increase in. In arizona the rates were over , 116 last year. 116 increase, and the deductibles are so high that you Many Americans cannot even use it. Many lost their doctors altogether. One third of the counties only have one insurer left. I mean, the Insurance Companies are fleeing, they are gone. So many gone. The house bill to repeal and replace obamacare will provide you and your fellow citizens with more choices, far more choices, at lower cost. The plan should pick they want. Now, they will be able to pick the plan they want, pick the doctor they want, and do a lot of things that the other plan was supposed to give and never gave. You dont pick your doctor, you dont think your plan. You remember that one. We are not going to have onesizefitsall. Instead, we are going to be working to unleash the power of the private marketplace to let insurers come in and compete for your business. You will see rates go down, down, down, and you will see plans go up, up, up. Nobody ishave planned thinking about today. They will have plans that nobody has even thought about. Millions and millions of people are wanting health care. Musscompetition and regulation will finally bring down the cost of your significantly. Unfortunately, it takes a wild to get there because you have to let the marketplace kick in. It will take a little while to get there. Once it does, it will be a thing of beauty. I wish you did not take a year, two years, but that is what is going to happen and that is the way it works, and we are willing to go through that process. Working together, we will get the job done, and i have to say this just in closing. I want to hear some of your stories and we will let the press hear your stories if you like. The press is making obamacare look so good all of a sudden. Im watching the news. Look so good. They ar aree showing these reports about this one gets so much and this one gets so much. It covers very few people. Showing these reports about this one gets so much and this one gets so much. It covers very few people. Obama is gone. Things are going to be very bad this year for the people with obamacare. They are going to have tremendous increases. Frankly,epublicans, are putting themselves at a very bad position. I told us to tom price all the time. By repealing obamacare. People are not going to see the truly devastating effects of obamacare. They are not going to see the devastation in 17 and 18 and 19. 2019. 2017, 2018, and it will be gone by then. The press is making it look so wonderful so that if we ended everyone will say, remember how , wonderful obamacare was . It is so great. It is a little bit like president obama. When he left, people like him. When he was here, people didnt like him so much. That is the way life goes. That is human nature. The fact is, obamacare is a disaster. And i say this to republicans on the time. By repealing it, by getting rid of it, by ending it, everybody is want to say, it used to be so great, but it was not great. I tell tom price and paul ryan and i tell everyone of them, i say the best thing you can do is politically is wait a year because it is going to blow itself off the map, but that is the wrong thing to do for the country and the wrong thing to do for our citizens. So with that, i would like to introduce some of the folks, and if you could say a few words about your curious with obamacare, and perhaps the press will even report it. Would you like to start . Thank you for this opportunity, mr. President. Our rates are three times with they were before obamacare started. We have one provider in the county. We have very little options for what we can and cannot do. We are a Small Business owner. We are actually not brick and mortar. We are cattle ranchers. We cannot afford our equipment if we are paying these rates year after year after year. Our food source is in jeopardy because of this health care law. Pres. Trump i know. Sorry. How are you . This is what is happening. It has gone up three times and then you have to pay if you do not want to use it. That is the alltime beauty. If you dont want to use it, you have to pay, and you have to pay bigleague so people say, if i use it, i use it. Im paying too much. If i dont use it, i have to pay a penalty. Do you ever have to pay penalties . Do you ever do that . We have not as of yet, but we were uninsured in december. They dropped us for the fourth time after we paid over 50,000 last year for health care. Pres. Trump and it has gone up triple . And before obamacare, you actually had Good Health Care . We did. Nobody ever takes that into account. Im not saying the system before was good, but it wasnt. But millions of people had Great Health Care that they loved. When you start deducting those millions of people from the socalled people that are happy you have a small number of , people that are happy. That i can tell you. How about you . We are kind of the same story. In 2009, i left a fulltime job to be a stayathome mom to two children. For our family, it was never an option to get government assistance. We did not want our neighbors to work harder so we dont have to. That was fine. 2015, that private insurance went up 102 and his employer told us in 2015 when it went up a final time an additional 34 that they could not carry our family anymore, so i had to enter back into the workforce, but i could not find had health insurance. We entered under obamacare, and we believed the pitch that if we like our doctor, we could keep our doctor. Even though we had to pay 1300 a month for obamacare, we thought we would have our doctors. We were on it for five months. My doctor would not take it. We paid them 8,000 in five months and were never able to use it. I think what makes our family so unique is out we are by no means wealthy. In 2014 when we entered the exchange we made 53,000 as a my husband and i together, as a family. When you look at Health Premiums and insurance, you know, pres. Trump how have you found obamacare . Im happy to see it gone. Almost put our family in financial ruin. That is the story for a lot of people. Of therump it is one biggest costs. It has been disastrous for businesses. Go ahead, sir. First of all, mr. President , thank you for having us here. I think it is a great opportunity to tell the american people, people like ourselves that have struggled with the health care law. I myself am from miami. Have not had very much time to prepare, but, you know, the president of the United States called me and i am here. ,[laughter] it just so happened i had every single year for the past couple of years i have had a , different insurance. Every single year. I had an individual plan. My wife and i, my wife is an attorney, i am a computer programmer, i a Small Business am owner. My wife has a Small Business. I just dont understand what happened. You know, we have a daughter with a disability and we changed , our plan every year. Pres. Trump the insurance was good before obamacare . Absolutely. Pres. Trump many, many plans were great before obamacare. They were so happy. That does not justify the system before obamacare but people are , miserable now, and it is putting people out of business and putting them in the poor house. Go ahead. It is just that we had to they canceled our plans, and it could not understand why they had canceled our plans, so we had no other choice. I remember the president of the United States saying that individual plans will not pick be covered anymore. You either need to have an employerbased plan i do not work for the government were a large employer. Pres. Trump very unfair. We are ground zero. My case is ground zero for the health care law. Pres. Trump and you represent a lot of people in the same situation. Very unfair. My wife is in the same situation. I think it is very unfair and i think that what the real scenario was that this law was supposed to implode, like you are saying, and my parents came from communist cuba. They know what socialism is all about. I know it socialism is. I know what socialism is. That pretty much is what this whole system was meant to have one single provider. Pres. Trump that is why it is so expensive, it is almost socialism when you think about it because you have to pay so , much. I am from arizona. The 116 increase israel, not a myth is real. Not a myth. I lost my a insurance during the obamacare era. After this last year, i decided to opt out. Right now, i do not have Traditional Health care, and i went from a 365 per month 809um last year to an premium this year. Thedepth that double deductible was going to be 6,800, no copay. If i went to the doctor, i would be paying out of my pocket, and i just it did not seem like a good use of my money. I thought i would be a better theard of that 17,000 at end of the year if i ever reached that deductible. I decided to opt out. I went into a Share Program and i am doing that. One of the reasons i felt like i can do this, you know, is areuse i think i know you going to get the same care, but it is only going to be for one year. I will be on my Business Program and opt out of Traditional Health care, health insurance, and i think youll get this done. Pres. Trump you have a lot of people in arizona paying a big penalty . Yes. And my husband also owns his own business and cannot afford to offer insurance to his employees and his employees were also in the independent market. Just getting too much. And i had individual insurance for 25 years since i started my business, but i have always been in the individual market and on what is right. You know, i took responsibility for myself and son Coventry Health care because im a business person. Health expenses to affect money that could be going to my business now having to go to a health expense. You know, i was in my mid20s when i said, you know what, we have always got to get square with this. So i have. Pres. Trump thank you very much. Still this year. Pres. Trump the people of arizona have been hit very, very hard at least 116 . ,here is the bad news. It is going to go up more this year. If we repeal it, nobody is going to know that and the press is going to say how wonderful it we miss obamacare. That is a problem, the biggest problem i have. It would do them a big favor, but it is not the right way. Go ahead. Mr. President pres. Trump go ahead. 2009, when the Affordable Care act was going through congress, what became the Affordable Care act i was , working for the Democratic National committee at the time. I resigned my position because i could tell that the democratic bill that was going through publicly fundd to abortion and that was not something i could go along with. I resigned my position, working focusesfoundation that on building a culture of life, protecting religious liberty in health care, limiting the public funding prohibiting the public funding of abortion. As an africanamerican, i am a graduate of a university of law. Pres. Trump thats good. Thank you, mr. President. All of our human and civil rights that we believe in as americans, and share as americans, the right to health care, the right to medical care, to housing, to all of these different things, are illusory if the right to life is not defended with maximum determination. 17 million africanamericans, it has been shown, have been aborted since roe v. Wade. I gave several speeches in michigan telling folks to vote for life in the general election and im really happy you are here to continue the bipartisan belief that there should be payer funding of abortion, and also really to support your effort to show that the patient human person should be at the center our Health Care System. Not the government. The patients be the center. Thank you. Pres. Trump thank you. I appreciate it. Great job. Thank you for inviting me. I run a nonprofit called healthy tennessee and across tennessee, i am a trauma surgeon. What we do we look forward to hosting you, sir. Yes, sir. We have Large Community events appalachia,al across tennessee, and it is really a grassroots effort which is something you understand better than anybody, we go help people, help folks with preventative medicine, educating folks. That is what we do. The one thing i have been seeing across tennessee is that folks really cannot afford these rising premiums. What they are doing is paying the tax penalty because it is cheaper and works out better than paying for the insurance. Problem that a big we are seeing across the states. So, thank you so much for what you are doing to tackle this problem. Pres. Trump this is a big problem and the way out of the problem is to do the plan that we are going to get done. We will get that done without penalties, too, by the way. The other thing about what we are talking about is we really have a threephase plan. They only want to talk about the first phase. The first phase is the most basic of phases and then you have phase two, largely done by the secretary, and the third phase is a lot of the bells and whistles, but they dont want to talk about the bells and whistles so they are really comparing something to something that will not be there for long enemies and we had to do it that waves because of congress. I would love to do it all in one package but if you did it that way, it cannot get done. So were going to get something done that is were to be terrific. Preciate it thank you, dr. , very much. I would like to thank you i appreciated. Wouldyou, doctor, i like to thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. I am in the farming industry and my wife and my daughter have their insurance supplied by their work and i buy my own. I have seen increases since obamacare to the tune of about 5,000 a year just for me. And i have considered taking the option of the penalty. My problem with the penalty though is that if i opt out of the program and by a private buy a private plan because im a healthy man, if i take that option not only is my income penalize, but my wifes income as well. She makes a considerable more amount of money that i do, but she has endurance. I do not think she has insurance. I do not think that its fair. The rate increase is just astronomical. Im in the county that has only one option, tennessee, and i have a 540 a month premium for the 7,000 outofpocket adaptable before i see any help at all. Highn have to pay up premium for a plan i do not need or want. Pres. Trump will you be able to continue in the years to, if you keep going like this . They are dropping out every day the supplies and every county. There are 35 counties in tennessee that have no option at all right now. I dont know what those folks do. Pres. Trump you know what that means . That means somebody is going to make a lot of money, you know that . They are going to make a lot of money off you. Youre not going to make it, they are going to make it. There are people very happy about your situation. Well, i appreciate it. Thank you, joe. Doctor . I am a physician in texas. Thank you for allowing me to be here. What im saying is that a lot of patients really are not adequately covered by obamacare. There is a rise in premiums and in deductibles, i took the patients from the hospital and they are shocked to get a 20,000 bill and to find that they are responsible for 6,000 of that because their detectable is so high and that is a situation that cannot continue. Underid expansion obamacare really does not cover folks either, because many people are not accepting it anymore in the outpatient setting so folks who have chronic medical illnesses, like my cancer, my wife is a Breast Cancer survivor, and most of her treatment was as an outpatient, very expensive outpatient care. Most physicians dont except medicaid. Accept medicaid. The folks you have obamacare insurance really are inadequately covered as well are payingy extremely high premiums and then having to pay extremely high debt doubles. Pres. Trump they dont even reach the high deductibles . They do not unless they have some sort of serious medical problem and they are in the hospital. They do not even reach the deductible often times. It is unfortunate, so i really appreciate it. Thatlly, i read the bill has been produced that is coming out of the house now, and i really like a lot of the changes in it. I think it is going to correct a lot of the issues that obamacare has had, so i really appreciate what you all are doing. Pres. Trump i appreciate it, doctor,. Thank you. I am from wisconsin. I am a nurse, i am a mom, and i am part of a huge group of middleclass families that were. Mpacted by the aca before aca we had insurance that , was eventually canceled and i , had written a letter to our senator just asking him what do i do . Do i quit my job completely so that we can obtain a subsidy . A job that i love as a nurse at a hospital that i love . Or do i uproot my family and try expenses thatwith dont even cover that medical pres. Trump the obamacare forced you to actually in a sense, forces you, economically, and almost potentially, to get another job . Right. Pres. Trump even though you like your job . Right. I ended up getting a higher earning Fulltime Position at the hospital i worked at, but that came up in price because i was working three days a week and spending time with my small children who are my number one priority, and after the aca, i was forced because we could not afford a premium of 1200 per month and a deductible that did not cover anything to find pres. Trump you mean the deductible was so high that eventually unless you had a really big problem, you would not even be able to use it . Correct. We are still in that boat. I would adaptable is six to 500, so if i have a child who so if imely 6,500, have a child that is extremely sick, it will cost me. Just last week, my daughter had a fever, and a center to school for three days. And i been devastating sent her to school for three days straight. It has been devastating. Pres. Trump you really do not have insurance if you think about it. All right. Thank you very much. Good luck. Thank you. Pres. Trump yes, sir . Thank you very much for hosting us. I had to start with something as i was leaving the house, my 11yearold walked up to me and asked me to give this to mr. President. [laughter] dear president trump, it is an honor to write to the president of the usa. I think you are a great president and a great man. Dont worry, the picture a view on the front of this looks nothing like you. Siobhan gray. Pres. Trump i wish i looked that good. [laughter] thank you. I had the privilege of meeting with secretary price and Vice President pence in cincinnati about a week and a half ago at a roundtable and i will share with you what i shared with them. A quote from the great president Ronald Reagan who said the most terrifying words in the english language were from the were im from the government and im here to help. I think the system was broken before the last administration got their hands on it. I started my company 21 years ago and i had a vision of wanting to provide 100 for Family Health care for as long as i had a company because i felt in my heart that it was the right thing to do. I was one of the last without, but sadly, after about 15 years, i had a choice of either having a company were being able to provide my employees that level of health care, and that is sad. You know, i tell my wife on the time, you can have anything you want, we just cant have everything we want. We had the best of care system in the world, we do, but it needs to be fixed. Owners likeusiness myself, and i am a manufacturer, im on several boards in the midwest of manufacturing, what we would like to see is not a government operated market, but a free market, you know. I sold Capital Equipment for a living. We have a trade show every year, and there is hundreds and hundreds of people selling competitive products. If we had a Health Care Show in my town, there would be three or four people under that roof. As a businessman yourself, you know what that does to driving down costs or lack there of. We would like to see more of a free Market Solution going back to what made this country great, you know, entrepreneurialism instead of impairments, working ethics instead of welfare. That is what we would like to ask for. Pres. Trump that is what we have been doing largely, but we also have to take care of people who cannot afford to be in a position like you are. We are going to do that. Largely, i think beyond everything, if you look at what is going to happen to competitive bidding, every element of what we are doing is competitive bidding. We have to take care of people who need the help. There are a lot of people like that. When i see 50 million americans taking, you know, assistance, marketing food stamps, it is like, for the people who really cannot provide for themselves. We are all charitable people, americans, the most generous nation on the face of the earth. I totally believe in safety nets for those who need them, not free handouts. Pres. Trump we are going to be very much freemarket people. Go ahead stan. , i am commissioner stan summers. I think im the only other elected official here besides you guys. It has been an interesting ride just watching the Health Care System in the last 26 years and my son was born 3. 5 months immature 26 years ago and we had really good insurance. Basically did not have to pay froming out of pocket where i worked. Us time went on, you could tell the Health Care System has been a little broke, little bit broke. Im going to call it the last President Health care program. I dont even want to say that name. , um, it has got to the point where i own a couple businesses too. ,i do the things i have to do. I actually ran for government so i could have insurance and won. But now, im looking at these people saying how can i provide insurance for them without raising taxes . Utah did not expand medicaid. We were not a part of that, and we can see why now because of the things that happened throughout the nation with state and companies. Pres. Trump absolutely. It got to the point where i ended up not only with my businesses to drive school bus to keep my wife at home with my kid who was ill. So now, i own three businesses, i drive a school bus, and i am an elected official to be able to continue to do the things i need to do with health care. The last three years pres. Trump gone through the roof. I have a 6,000 deductible hsa, but i will meet that again in three months. My wife said this morning, 4900 already this year in march to be able to meet my outofpocket, so by the time april comes, i would have met that to be able to continue. If there is one thing i could ask you about, my boy has got a rare disease. I appreciate you talking about that in your speeches, is if some of you have cancer or somebody has a rare disease or continues to have problems, why do we have to deal with a deductible every year . I mean, so, im sitting here at christmas going, ok my , deductibles has been met for six or eight months and im going to have to do it for the same disease, the same medicine. Pres. Trump could you answer that . That would be interesting. It is all about the risk and spreading the risk with insurance over period time, but it is a challenge with people with chronic disease. There is no doubt about it. Talking about grassroots, i mean, youre talking about all the people we support with the farmers and ranchers and Small Business people and the people that are in manufacturing, our county is one of the largest manufacturing counties in the nation per capita. And we would love to tell you thanks. We would love to tell you thanks for everything you have been doing. Pres. Trump its going to get better. We have a ton in the space program. We used to make the shuttle, rocket boosters. You know, we would love to have the space program. I got a really good friend pres. Trump jobs are coming back. I have got a friend that is going to go up in a little bit and headed up on a space ship from russia and would love to come back to the United States. And be able to go up through the United States. Although jobs i know will come back with you. Pres. Trump he is sitting right next year a big believer in what , you are saying. Anything we can do to help you, the counties are behind you. We can find you low hanging fruit to be able to pick off the tree to find your jobs. Just let us know where we can help. Pres. Trump thank you, stan. When you have anything to say, tom, generally speaking . Really powerful about the consequences of the current law and hear peoples lives that you have been affected in remarkably adverse ways. Sometimes, you do not think about it as it relates to health care, whether it is businesses havent been able to survive or individuals who have to take 3, 4, 5 jobs. This is about real people, real patients. Working with you and your leadership, we are really excited about the opportunity to put in place the patientcentered system where patients, families, and doctors are making decisions and not washington, d. C. Pres. Trump what about the concept, and everyone knows it is happening that obamacare is , imploding, that we dont do anything, it is not going to be around for another year. The Insurance Companies are fleeing, but now it seems to be , getting this wonderful press like it is a wonderful thing and getting worse and 2017 will be the worst year. A lot of things were put into i17. I assume 2018 will be worse even than it has essentially gone. 2017. How do you respond to that . I have been telling you, why dont we wait, let it implode, and not take the blame . I have been telling you that as an option. It is not an option i like, but it is certainly an option. How do you respond that . 2018 can be better if we important changes. Pres. Trump if we dont implement it, what happens with obamacare . What you see is a magnification of all the stories around this table, more individuals not having the kind of income that the disposable income they would use. More moms and dads not able to care for their kids, more people getting insurance but no care. This is about real peoples lives and that is why it is so important. Pres. Trump not being able to be user because the deductibles are so high. You hear the stories where they are paying a fortune for insurance and you hear how high their deductible is and him as they have a tragedy in their family they are never going to , be able to use it. 13,000 before he has to pay. 13,000 before the insurance kicks in. 13,000. Exactly. Pres. Trump he has been working very hard and he is doing a great job. Mr. Vice president , do you have anything to say . Vp. Pence no, mr. President i , think what these americans are seeing in high relief is that it puts people over politics. And i just want to thank all of them for coming and in front of the National Media talking about the real world impacts of obamacare. You said it consistently over the last two years that obamacare has failed. These people are emblematic of the americans that obamacare has failed and im so grateful for their time, and so grateful for your compassionate leadership in driving the congress and driving our nation towards Better Health care outcomes for them and Better Solutions built on those american principles of more consumer choices, more free market, but also as you said caring for the most vulnerable , by allowing our states to innovate in medicaid in ways that will create a Better HealthCare Coverage than they have today. Pres. Trump thank you. Thank you, mike. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much. Mr. President you have any message for those concerned about losing their insurance, medicaid being higher cost because they are older . Pres. Trump it will get better. Much better. Hopefully, it will get very good. It takes a period time, it does. [indiscernible conversation] thank you, all. Intelligence community thank you. The Congressional Budget Office released its assessment of the House Republican health care bill. The cbo projects the number of uninsured people would grow by 14 million in 2018. The cbo also predicts the theslation would decrease federal deficits by 337 billion over the next 10 years. You can read the report at our website. Dont you go to www. Cspan. Org. Cspans washington live every day with news on policy issues that impact you. Foreign policy staff writer emily previews Rex Tillersons trip to asia this week and then tom wilde smith, former president of the actuaries, discusses proposals across state lines. Also joining us, gregg myra, National Security correspondent for npr, will talk about the trump administrations approach to combating isis and overall counterterrorism efforts. The sure to watch cspans washington journal, beginning at 7 00 eastern tuesday morning. Join the discussion. Oregon senator ron wyden, top democrat on the finance committee, spoke on the floor about the Congressional Budget Office report showing 24 alien 24 Million People will lose Insurance Coverage under the republican bill to repeal the Affordable Care act. He spoke about what he called care to be cms administrator, who won