events that may have been more helpful to obama cair. i think it s damned if you do, damned if you don t. i understand from the campaign standpoint the idea that we re going to repeal every single word of obamacare. i understand that from a campaign standpoint, especially to fire up the base. but from a legislative and policy standpoint, it s a whole different thing. you ve now expanded health care to several millions of people and now you re going to take it away. by the way, let s remember for one moment, the fundamentals of obamacare are fund mamentals fr health care on the right. most guys would have rather had a single payer. this was put in place by myth romney. there are markets, factors at work here where we don t like the idea of a mandate but if we don t expand the pool of people
senator rand paul from kentucky said he wouldn t vote for it because repealing obamacare was still too much like obamacare. whatever. for whatever reasons the two of them said they wouldn t vote it. so we were heading into this week thinking. because we knew the next things that were going to happen in the health care bill that might affect those numbers, either collins and paul changing their mind and additional senators joining with them and saying no, which would of course end their chances of repealing obama cair. we knew some of those things were going to fall into line. we knew heading into this past weekend that today, monday, or maybe tomorrow, tuesday, the congressional budget office was going to give us a new score of the republicans bill which tells you not just how much it s going to cost but how many millions of americans it s going to cost their health insurance. we knew it was going to happen
we haven t had any time in here. i m sorry, you need to go. let s go, guys. reporter: that was only moments ago only the seventh floor of the state department, still no answers from secretary of state rex tillerson. good day i m andrea mitchell at the state department taking a back seat on national security and faces massive budget cuts. this afternoon i ll be at the first state department briefing in six weeks since the inaugural, an absence of public diplomacy not seen since 1953 when dwight eisenhower was president, when this tradition started of speaking out from the platform here at the state department to the rest of the world. more on that in a moment. first to capitol hill and the first big step for republicans to repeal and replace obamacare. the new house plan would strip the health insurance mandate but keep two popular provisions, coverage for people with preexisting conditions and coverage for young adults up to age 26 under their parents plan. obama cair s medicaid
there s a danger, the white house saying they re so close if they don t deliver and if they can t bring republicans together that s another nunlg defeat and actually making implementation work on health care, this is something that people don t pay attention to. it takes a long time for it to get absorbed into the system. obama cair is being absorbed into the health care system and there s pluses and minuses as well, but coverage is a key issue, whether it s hospitals, whether it s how the system works in terms of controlling costs, how many people are getting covered is a big issue. there s also been, i just wanted to add also been a contradiction with what the white house is saying is in this bill versus what s in the bill versus they re trying to pressure congress to get this done, and then you have president trump saying i told them to take their time. you can have one more week. so it really does, there seems to be a lot of conflicting messages and it only makes it