than it would have been had the health care inflation of george bush continued unabated. so the aca moderated health care cost increases. it s hard for people to feel that as drug costs go up and other costs go up but it s actually been one of the big successes of the affordable care act and it s going to be, again, a big challenge for donald trump to keep that health care cost under control if he gets rid of all the aca because that s been a lot of the provisions of the aca that doesn t get as much attention and a major reason we ve been able to see some moderation in the growth of health care costs. professor gruber, weigh in on that point about costs if you would and also, 20 million people now have health care who didn t have it before this law went into effect. president-elect trump made it clear he doesn t want to kick all of those people off of health care but how does he accomplish that? if he repeals it? let s be clear on what the aca accomplishes. three fundamental things
if all you have is high risk people, premiums go through the roof and no one can afford health insurance so we need both elements. how donald trump is going to thread that needle, lord knows. he may not understand that and it s not clear that the people around him understand that and there will be a reckoning for them if they try to keep the preexisting condition exclusion but eliminate the mandate, eliminate the exchanges and the rest of it. professor gruber, what s your take? can he thread that needle? do you see any way to do that realistically? actually, i think it s a bit worse than he said because let s be clear because the preexisting exclusions are a narrow part of the aca. let s look at my wife who s a breast cancer survivor. in donald trump s example, the insurer can say, if we offer you insurance, we can deny your
parts of the affordable care act he would keep. when you replace it, will you make sure people with pre-conditions are still covered? yes. it happens to be one of the strongest assets and with the children living with parents for an extended period. you re going to keep that? very much try to keep that. adds cost, but it s very much something we re going to try to keep. two obamacare architects. ezekiel emanuel and johnathan gruber, professor of economics at mit. thank you for both for being here. thank you. you heard what donald trump had to say. i ve been talking to my sources who have said that the president was surprised by the fact that he had to explain a lot to president-elect trump about how all of this would work. obamacare is intricate and
i don t know. the guy who worked on obamacare. okay. i don t know him. johnathan gruber. i do not know. i have no idea. anybody i should know? i asked 25 people. no, who is he? of 25 people, only four knew. i do know who he is, it is the economist who thinks we re all idiots. well, he cooked the figures, he thinks the american people are stupid. well, you re one of the only ones here. that doesn t surprise me. so you don t think they re all stupid? no, i don t think they are, or they wouldn t have put all the republicans in the recent election. we sent stossel out with the simplest questions, who is the vice president. we put his picture up there. who is that? we don t know. you want the massive folks to have even more power and they