to be comparable affordability versus the requirement today. so basically in many ways it is just a band-aid for a dysfunctional healthcare market right now. i m skeptical. arthel: i want to ask you, why and how do you think congress is still here with no resolution on how to move forward on healthcare? because the people that gave us the affordable care act and obama care, fought and won to preserve it. and now they want a bailout of the system that isn t working. i m not certain whether that s good policy. frankly i don t think it is. we passed a real fix-it bill in the house. the american healthcare act. and we did it the right way by allowing people to buy the kind of insurance they want. not the kind that the government thinks they should have. the problem with the alexander murray bill, it keeps all of the essential wellness benefits, the health benefits that are making people buy an insurance policy that is too good, too generous or too many benefits they won t
marketplace. there are loopholes that democrats would be fine with fixing. but i think that there are definitely there s a list of 20 things that democrats would be happy to have change in obamacare. eric: it s a work in progress. we ll see if they get there. my pleasure. arthel: steve bannon taking a shot at president george w. bush. i want to apologize to the bush folks outside or in this audience. there s not been a more destructive presidency than george bush s. arthel: that comment an apparent response to president bush s speech in new york denouncing bigotry and current
use and prices them out of the market. so until we get prices that are able to flow, plans that people can tailor to their own circumstances, you are not going to see this market function properly. arthel: that s your idea, tailored healthcare, your idea fixing the problem. nothing s a perfect plan of course. if you wouldn t mind, there s got to be some sort of bumps in the road on that plan. what do you think they are? no, no, we had high risk pools, 138 billion dollars of invisible high risk pools. we had a refundable tax credit for a safety net. and we returned to the states the ability to implement those high risk pools that was taken away under the affordable care act. then we removed all of the federal mandates or at least gave the states the option to develop their own plan without federal mandates, which would have lowered premiums allowing prices to float so that young and healthy people could buy an affordable plan and get back into the insurance pools. alexander murray doe
ultimately a lot of members of congress feel like they ve let down constituents by failing to repeal obamacare, so they want to get more than the cost-sharing reduction payments. there s a lot of uncertainty. some insurance companies are saying that people are not sure if obamacare exists or doesn t exist and if their plan will be there three months from now. so i think there s a sense of urgency to move the ball forward. for now, it seems like the bill is stuck where it is. eric: for the republicans, what are the things they want or could get? i think there s a lot of on their wish list, maybe getting rid of they want block granting, that was that effort by lindsey graham and bill cassidy to devolve obamacare
with congress, where they have to come up with a fix. it s the same with daca. so congress is holding the bag, the ball is in their court, not president trump s. and politically, the white house is happy to have them be the case. eric: at the end, james, what could that genuine bipartisan bargain look like? i think that democrats agree that obamacare is imperfect. no one thinks that obamacare is flawless. there are a lot of things that you can do to shore up the marks