of payments, we have to up front acknowledge this is an illegal propping up of obamacare to begin with. and the president has to respond to that issue. hold that thought, let s listen to the the united states. thank you very much, tony. thank you. [ chanting usa ] thank you very much. you know i have been here,
voters and democrats, too. shouldn t be partisan about this. to me it will be a catastrophe. i am glad folks at the value voters summit enjoyed it. he is such a godly man, he embodies christian values of faith and hope and charity and prudence and compassion, all of the things christians believe in, he is the exemplar of that, but going to screw them on health care. scott, you re joining us from kentucky today, aren t you? yes, louisville. let me ask you about kentucky. you have in it a state that overwhelmingly voted for the president, also a state back in 2008 had uninsured rate over 13%. the uninsured rate last year because of the aca, because of obamacare was 5.1%. just goes to paul s point about a lot of the people that were helped through obamacare, it is not perfect, i have been to tennessee, talked to folks that cannot afford obamacare, but
forgot what their pledges were. we re going a little different route. in the end, it is going to be just as effective, and maybe it will even be better. this just hours after the trump white house deals a crippling blow to obamacare, cutting off subsidies to help low income americans afford health insurance. next hour, the president is targeting another obama legacy item, iran nuclear deal. he is expected to announce the agreement no longer serves america s national interests, but will stop short of scrapping the deal all together. let s again with the president as he wrapped the speech moments ago. senior white house correspondent jeff zeleny is there. two big announcements, two major obama legacy items. what is the president telling folks today? reporter: indeed, kate, good morning. the president was clear when he was talking about what congress has not done in terms of repealing and replacing obamacare. call it the political equivalent
plans in the transition period into the replace funded the csr subsidy for insurance companies as well. that s acknowledgment why this is important. conservative republicans don t want to do anything to fix obamacare, they re opposed to it, and think this is not only the right move, nothing should be done to prop it up. listen to what jim jordan had to say earlier. the csr payments are in fact illegal. the president said he is no longer going to engage in making these payments. let s move forward, do what we should have done a long time ago, what we in the house passed, let s move forward on that. obviously the issue is there s no legislative near term for repeal and replace, have to wait a couple months. how do they handle this? there will be a congressional fight. democrats will hold out until they get the payments, republicans have to figure out how can they move forward while understanding the party is going to be divided and still try to figure out a way to get this
saying in that state where you are, brought down the uninsured level significantly. yeah, uninsured rate came down in kentucky because basically what we did here was expanded medicaid. i think 85% of everybody that got insurance because of obamacare did so because of the expansion in medicaid. it wasn t free market exercise getting people private insurance, this was putting them on medicaid. now the state budget here, you ask the governor, he will tell you, we re under massive strain because of that medicaid expansion and wrestling with that. that s what folks don t want to talk about. everybody wants to talk about the fact that hey, everybody got insurance, but nobody wants to discuss how will kentucky pay for it when the federal government picks up 100% of the tab of the medicaid expansion. that s a real issue when you consider that a state like kentucky and other states not only have that medicaid expansion to pay for, our state s case has $40 billion pension shortfall on top of i