as late as july 19, 2016, the company was still planning to expand its footprint to as many as 20 states. but, after the justice department sued aetna to block the merger with humana, aetna announced it would cut its participation in the exchanges from 15 states to four. and that s when its ceo subsequently unleashed the death spiral remark. joining me now, congresswoman karen bass of california. congresswoman, your colleagues across the aisle have been making a lot of the death spiral. they quoted the aetna ceo particularly. they kept saying obamacare is collapsing. what is your response to that? especially coming from the state of california which is one of the reasons why obamacare is successful nationwide, i think that s the fear-mongering to justify what they re getting ready to do, which is to potentially cut 15 million people off of health care coverage.
keeping premiums lower? but insurance companies put in tens of millions of dollars and defeated those initiatives. so problems people say are because of obamacare, they re not necessarily because of the affordable care act, it s because there s not enough contl on the insce companies themselves. how long have you been in congress, congresswoman? i m in my seveh year now and i have voted over 60 times against the repeal. so let me ask you this. your seventh year now. have you ever seen a piece of legislation of this magnitude being moved this quickly in your congressional career. no, and isn t this the same thing the rains accused the democrats of doing a year before i got here? we are voting on this bill and it hasn t even been scored by the cbo. we re expecting the cbo score in the next couple of days but right now we believe the cbo is going to show that about 15 million people will lose their coverage. do you think there is any way to stop this in the house? i mean, it s s
as for president trump, he s in what the white house calls full sell mode the bill meeting with members of congress to talk budget and health care. heweeted spite what you hear in the press, health care is coming along great, we are talking to many groups and it will end in a beautiful picture. joining me now, republican congressman steve king of iowa and congressman, a lot of your colleagues, particularly the more conservative colleagues in the house and senate are in open revolt at the pace and process with which this bill is being considered. are you one of those individuals? i m not in open revolt but i am concerned about us not being able to get some of our conservative principles plugged into this legislation. so i m with those folks on the policy side of this thing but not on the revolutionary side. let me ask you this did you feel the affordable care act was passed too quickly? we fought it for a long time but in the end it was jammed through us and these are the word
decide between continuing with obamacare the way it is and trying to supplement it so it doesn t go under or going back the way we were i d be for going back the way we were and then start the process of the reform of the existing health care system and i think more people are better off that way. i want to get you on the record here. so you think the health care system before the affordable care act with no changes, back to that, is superior to the one we have now? absolutely i believe that. let me ask you this and left us a foundation where we can start to improve our health care and delivery system. let me ask you this. the t that steve scalise and paul ryan and others in leadership are making is that everyone will roll over. that they re going to basically make you walk the plank on this. they won t listen to anything you say. they won t take changes and mccarthy was clear about that today. they re going to make you vote for this bill whether you like it or not. are you
wikileaks that greased him into the white house? is he on the side of the group that shares steve bannon, his con singh lee are consiglieri? he s dancing the one that brung him and doesn t mind a lick that we know it. that s hardball for now. all in with chris hayes starts right now. tonight on all in. this will be a plan where you can choose your plan. and you know what the plan is. this is the plan. the hard sell gets harder. we re not jamming this down people s throats. as the republican calls to slow down and start over mount. trumpcare takes two steps forward in the dark of night. the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing obamacare. tonight, are staunch conservatives starting to wobble? plus