again, areas which are largely trump supporting. so he s ending up hurting his own supporters in what he s doing to the health law. julie, you said there are other components of obamacare that might prove more valuable and this doesn t signal the end of obamacare. medicaid expansion, this is something that a lot of people didn t think about, because they thought about the mandates and the mandatory coverage, but there are a lot of experts who tell me that they feel medicaid expansion was actually more impactful. medicaid expansion has covered more people. there was always an expectation that it was going to be a big part of the coverage expansion. the two populations that have not traditionally been able to get their own coverage are people who are poor and in some states, poor enough to get medicaid, but don t meet one of the other categories. they re not disabled, elderly, pregnant women or children. and there were sick people who couldn t buy insurance because insurers wouldn t
medicaid expansion, this is something that a lot of people didn t think about, because they thought about the mandates and the mandatory coverage, but there are a lot of experts who tell me that they feel medicaid expansion was actually more impactful. medicaid expansion has covered more people. there was always an expectation that it was going to be a big part of the coverage expansion. the two populations that have not traditionally been able to get their own coverage are people who are poor and in some states, poor enough to get medicaid, but don t meet one of the other categories. they re not disabled, elderly, pregnant women or children. and there were sick people who couldn t buy insurance because insurers wouldn t sell to them. what the affordable care act did more than anyone else, it let those people into the health insurance system. a number of senators have come out and said, this isn t over, they are going to revisit a real repeal and maybe a replacement of obamacare in
mandate which is being terminated under our just signed tax cut bill. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell didn t say obamacare is dead today. here he is calling on senators to work together on health care legislation. the graham/cassidy proposal, they intend to obviously continue to work on. and my view of that is as soon as we have the votes to achieve it i d like to do that. 51-49 is a pretty tight majority. but i d love to be able to make more substantial changes to obamacare than we have. joining us now is julie robner chief correspondent at kaiser health news and understands this stuff better than almost anyone. julie, the failing of american health care compared to other wealthy countries around the world is that we do not have an adequately large and diverse risk pool for people who wish to buy insurance outside of their workplace.
health care compared to other wealthy countries around the world is that we do not have an adequately large and diverse risk pool for people who wish to buy insurance outside of their workplace. that s what the individual mandate was supposed to achieve, getting more and more people to buy insurance so that you ve got young and healthy people along with the sick. taking the mandate out, do we not end up once again with a shrunken risk pool of older and sicker people whose health care costs more? well, that s certainly possible but, you know, a lot of experts are sort of coming around to the conclusion that there s at least a possibility that the subsidies you talked about still there that help people afford coverage that those might be just as important if not more important than the mandate. there s a lot of discussion about how how much of an impact the mandates actually had. the penalties were not all that large. correct. the congressional budget office is scaling back its e
that s what the individual mandate was supposed to achieve, getting more and more people to buy insurance so that you ve got young and healthy people along with the sick. taking the mandate out, do we not end up once again with a shrunken risk pool of older and sicker people whose health care costs more? well, that s certainly possible but, you know, a lot of experts are sort of coming around to the conclusion that there s at least a possibility that the subsidies you talked about still there that help people afford coverage that those might be just as important if not more important than the mandate. there s a lot of discussion about how how much of an impact the mandates actually had. the penalties were not all that large. correct. the congressional budget office is scaling back its estimatings about how much of an impact the mandate itself has had. and it s possible particularly looking at the numbers for this year, the surprisingly large numbers and i should point out that