you do? what do you say? no, i m not seeing any difference at all, whether the house bill passes or the senate bill passes. the same problem is still in effect. people cannot afford to access the healthcare system because the out of pocket costs are too high. until the legislative process or legislators really come to grips with having health insurance doesn t equal access to quality healthcare, we re not going to get a change in this. that s a problem. neil: on the private market side and the public, the government side with obamacare, what have you, you know better than others. the premiums have been increasing, the out of pocket payments have been increasing for all types. do you see anything on the horizon that could reverse that or is that just a supply and demand issue here? actually, in the free market side where there s doctors that are making direct contracts with their patients, we call direct primary care practice, there s a different approach. it s much cheaper. we re
to always do what s right for the american people. we know there are a number of improvements that could be made. i have a few in mind rite now. the fact is that we ve been facing 60 repeal votes, now this latest thing, if the republicans have suddenly realized they have to work with us, that s a good thing. right now medicare part d does not negotiate drug prices. that s something we could work on to bring drug prices down. there s things we could work together on. was do you see as fixes for problems in the private market side of the aca? you know the stories. a lot has to do with which states didn t expand, did expand medica medicaid. i get that you have premium problems, market problems, do you have ideas for that? in minnesota when we saw spikes in the private market we worked together in a bipartisan way to supplement some of those
so this was kind of the moving target. so, yes, it took a lot of time on the policy side, on the market side, and there was a team in place with other people, outside experts coming in, kicking the tires, regular reports, regular dashboards on the tech side, but clearly the estimate that it was ready to go october 1st was just flat out wrong. did the white house oversell it? i don t think they did. i think what we said from the outset was, you know, this was fixing a very broken market where individuals really were on their own. if you were healthy and wealthy, you could get coverage. if you weren t, you were pretty much on your own if you didn t work for the right company. so that was fixed. we have millions of people, not only in the private marketplace, but millions more in expanded medicaid, which is going on around the country with republicans and democratic governors, and then there are a
so this was kind of the moving target. so, yes, it took a lot of time on the policy side, on the market side, and there was a team in place with other people, outside experts coming in, kicking the tires, regular reports, regular dashboards on the tech side, but clearly the estimate that it was ready to go october 1st was just flat out wrong. did the white house oversell it? i don t think they did. i think what we said from the outset was, you know, this was fixing a very broken market where individuals really were on their own. if you were healthy and wealthy, you could get coverage. if you weren t, you were pretty much on your own if you didn t work for the right company. so that was fixed. we have millions of people, not only in the private marketplace, but millions more in expanded medicaid, which is going on around the country with republicans and democratic governors, and then there are a
setting this process up trying to make sure we had competitive markets in every state around the country. as you remember, we didn t really know until about six months out how many states would actually run their own sites, who would be on their own. so this was kind of the moving target. so yes, it took a lot of time on the policy side on the market side and there was a team in place with other people outside experts coming in, kicking the tires sean regular reports, regular dash boards on the tech side. but clearly the estimate that it was ready to go october 1st was flat out wrong. did the white house oversell it? i don t think they did. i think what we said from the outset was this was fixing a very broken market, where individuals really were on their own. if you were healthy, and wealthy you could get coverage. if you weren t, you were pretty much on your own if you didn t