nominations, georgia congressman tom price for director of health and human services and seema verma. price holds the distinction of being one of the few republican lawmakers to actually come up with a plan to replace obamacare. the bill entitled the empowering patients first act. this one from congressman price is even further to the right, it should be clear. among other things price s bill would let insurers charge more to patients with pre-existing conditions. it would give out tax credits based on age bracket. the older you are, the more you get with no adjustments for income as the ryan plan does. and price s bill would simply eliminate the medicaid expansion. a program that covers millions of people, replacing it with nothing. and as the current chairman of the house budget committee,
price has also backed ryan s plan to privatize medicare telling reporters that he expects the house to move on medicare reforms six to eight months into the trump administration. it s pretty clear that the affordable care act has some problems that need fixing, but the one unequivocal success of that law is it has expanded insurance coverage to about 20 million people in this country. since 2013, the uninsured rate has plummeted to an all-time low of just 10% in the first quarter of 2016. for first time 90% of americans have health care coverage. those gains appear to have been especially pronounced among low income whites without a college degree. according to the washington post, the unissued rate for college educated whites fell by ten percentage points from 25% to 15%. if obamacare is repealed and congressman price s bill is signed into law, a lot of those same people, many of them, could
conceptually true, in every individual instance, it was not, clearly, some people lost their doctors. can anyone who is going to under take this massive change to american health care, saying if you have insurance now, you re going to be insured, seems like no one can credibly make that promise. remember in 2010 when republicans retook the majority in the house, they passed the paul ryan medicare plan out of the house and they ve done that every single year since then. right. and they haven t lost their majority. they ve retained it. it s not obvious to me that there s this huge april price for passing the ryan plan out of the house. it s one thing to pass the bill and another thing when that bill becomes law. sure. so there s a very big difference in that republicans have spent eight years criticizing democrats health care policy initiatives, criticizing the affordable care act, they will own it and they will, i will imagine, own it entirely. sure, but the really import
which he was quick to point out, and the kind of vision of both ryan and price? yeah, i would say the way you summarize trump s policy point of view, he s made three key promises. one, i ll reveal and replace obamacare. two, i m going to take care of everybody. this is a guy that you note this your opening segment who supports universal coverage. and he said he s going to do it in a way that s less expensive, less costly than the aca. those thee policy objectives can be achieved. there are reform plans out there. the one we founded, we estimate would do that. and remember, the hhs secretary doesn t write legislation. right. that s the job of congress. and not just both branches of congress, particularly the senate. you are going to have to get 60 votes in the senate to replace the aca. so democrats are going to have a say. what s fas ain ting to me here is the medicare privatization angle of this. this is something that paul ryan has wanted to do forever. it s part of the ryan
named secretary of the department of commerce. the man who ran for office on a pledge to, quote, drain the swamp of globalists, elitists and insiders now seems to be doing his most to fill it to the brim. trump is currently at dinner with mitt romney at a restaurant. we ll keep you posted if they make any news. it s not unusual for campaign promises to fall by the way side, but with his latest nominations, particularly those related to health care, donald trump may be in the midst of pulling off the biggest bait and switch in recent memory. throughout the campaign going back to the primaries trump indicated that while he d repeal the affordable care act he d take a different approach to health care than most republicans. you cannot let people die on the street. some people will say that s in the a very republican thing to say. the problem is that everybody thinks that you people as republicans hate the concept of taking care of people that are really, really sick and are going to die