Secretary price and a lot of i alongtary price and with our entire administration and a lot of people in the senate and a lot of people in the house are committed to repealing and replacing this disastrous law with a Health Care Plan that lowers cost, expands choice, and ensures access for everyone. You represent the millions of americans who have seen that obamacare premiums increase in. In arizona the rates were over , 116 last year. 116 increase, and the deductibles are so high that you Many Americans cannot even use it. Many lost their doctors altogether. One third of the counties only have one insurer left. I mean, the Insurance Companies are fleeing, they are gone. So many gone. The house bill to repeal and replace obamacare will provide you and your fellow citizens with more choices, far more choices, at lower cost. The plan should pick they want. Now, they will be able to pick the plan they want, pick the doctor they want, and do a lot of things that the other plan was supposed to give and never gave. You dont pick your doctor, you dont think your plan. You remember that one. We are not going to have onesizefitsall. Instead, we are going to be working to unleash the power of the private marketplace to let insurers come in and compete for your business. You will see rates go down, down, down, and you will see plans go up, up, up. Nobody ishave planned thinking about today. They will have plans that nobody has even thought about. Millions and millions of people are wanting health care. Musscompetition and regulation will finally bring down the cost of your significantly. Unfortunately, it takes a wild to get there because you have to let the marketplace kick in. It will take a little while to get there. Once it does, it will be a thing of beauty. I wish you did not take a year, two years, but that is what is going to happen and that is the way it works, and we are willing to go through that process. Working together, we will get the job done, and i have to say this just in closing. I want to hear some of your stories and we will let the press hear your stories if you like. The press is making obamacare look so good all of a sudden. Im watching the news. Look so good. They ar aree showing these reports about this one gets so much and this one gets so much. It covers very few people. Showing these reports about this one gets so much and this one gets so much. It covers very few people. Obama is gone. Things are going to be very bad this year for the people with obamacare. They are going to have tremendous increases. Frankly,epublicans, are putting themselves at a very bad position. I told us to tom price all the time. By repealing obamacare. People are not going to see the truly devastating effects of obamacare. They are not going to see the devastation in 17 and 18 and 19. 2019. 2017, 2018, and it will be gone by then. The press is making it look so wonderful so that if we ended everyone will say, remember how , wonderful obamacare was . It is so great. It is a little bit like president obama. When he left, people like him. When he was here, people didnt like him so much. That is the way life goes. That is human nature. The fact is, obamacare is a disaster. And i say this to republicans on the time. By repealing it, by getting rid of it, by ending it, everybody is want to say, it used to be so great, but it was not great. I tell tom price and paul ryan and i tell everyone of them, i say the best thing you can do is politically is wait a year because it is going to blow itself off the map, but that is the wrong thing to do for the country and the wrong thing to do for our citizens. So with that, i would like to introduce some of the folks, and if you could say a few words about your curious with obamacare, and perhaps the press will even report it. Would you like to start . Thank you for this opportunity, mr. President. Our rates are three times with they were before obamacare started. We have one provider in the county. We have very little options for what we can and cannot do. We are a Small Business owner. We are actually not brick and mortar. We are cattle ranchers. We cannot afford our equipment if we are paying these rates year after year after year. Our food source is in jeopardy because of this health care law. Pres. Trump i know. Sorry. How are you . This is what is happening. It has gone up three times and then you have to pay if you do not want to use it. That is the alltime beauty. If you dont want to use it, you have to pay, and you have to pay bigleague so people say, if i use it, i use it. Im paying too much. If i dont use it, i have to pay a penalty. Do you ever have to pay penalties . Do you ever do that . We have not as of yet, but we were uninsured in december. They dropped us for the fourth time after we paid over 50,000 last year for health care. Pres. Trump and it has gone up triple . And before obamacare, you actually had Good Health Care . We did. Nobody ever takes that into account. Im not saying the system before was good, but it wasnt. But millions of people had Great Health Care that they loved. When you start deducting those millions of people from the socalled people that are happy you have a small number of , people that are happy. That i can tell you. How about you . We are kind of the same story. In 2009, i left a fulltime job to be a stayathome mom to two children. For our family, it was never an option to get government assistance. We did not want our neighbors to work harder so we dont have to. That was fine. 2015, that private insurance went up 102 and his employer told us in 2015 when it went up a final time an additional 34 that they could not carry our family anymore, so i had to enter back into the workforce, but i could not find had health insurance. We entered under obamacare, and we believed the pitch that if we like our doctor, we could keep our doctor. Even though we had to pay 1300 a month for obamacare, we thought we would have our doctors. We were on it for five months. My doctor would not take it. We paid them 8,000 in five months and were never able to use it. I think what makes our family so unique is out we are by no means wealthy. In 2014 when we entered the exchange we made 53,000 as a my husband and i together, as a family. When you look at Health Premiums and insurance, you know, pres. Trump how have you found obamacare . Im happy to see it gone. Almost put our family in financial ruin. That is the story for a lot of people. Of therump it is one biggest costs. It has been disastrous for businesses. Go ahead, sir. First of all, mr. President , thank you for having us here. I think it is a great opportunity to tell the american people, people like ourselves that have struggled with the health care law. I myself am from miami. Have not had very much time to prepare, but, you know, the president of the United States called me and i am here. ,[laughter] it just so happened i had every single year for the past couple of years i have had a , different insurance. Every single year. I had an individual plan. My wife and i, my wife is an attorney, i am a computer programmer, i a Small Business am owner. My wife has a Small Business. I just dont understand what happened. You know, we have a daughter with a disability and we changed , our plan every year. Pres. Trump the insurance was good before obamacare . Absolutely. Pres. Trump many, many plans were great before obamacare. They were so happy. That does not justify the system before obamacare but people are , miserable now, and it is putting people out of business and putting them in the poor house. Go ahead. It is just that we had to they canceled our plans, and it could not understand why they had canceled our plans, so we had no other choice. I remember the president of the United States saying that individual plans will not pick be covered anymore. You either need to have an employerbased plan i do not work for the government were a large employer. Pres. Trump very unfair. We are ground zero. My case is ground zero for the health care law. Pres. Trump and you represent a lot of people in the same situation. Very unfair. My wife is in the same situation. I think it is very unfair and i think that what the real scenario was that this law was supposed to implode, like you are saying, and my parents came from communist cuba. They know what socialism is all about. I know it socialism is. I know what socialism is. That pretty much is what this whole system was meant to have one single provider. Pres. Trump that is why it is so expensive, it is almost socialism when you think about it because you have to pay so , much. I am from arizona. The 116 increase israel, not a myth is real. Not a myth. I lost my a insurance during the obamacare era. After this last year, i decided to opt out. Right now, i do not have Traditional Health care, and i went from a 365 per month 809um last year to an premium this year. Thedepth that double deductible was going to be 6,800, no copay. If i went to the doctor, i would be paying out of my pocket, and i just it did not seem like a good use of my money. I thought i would be a better theard of that 17,000 at end of the year if i ever reached that deductible. I decided to opt out. I went into a Share Program and i am doing that. One of the reasons i felt like i can do this, you know, is areuse i think i know you going to get the same care, but it is only going to be for one year. I will be on my Business Program and opt out of Traditional Health care, health insurance, and i think youll get this done. Pres. Trump you have a lot of people in arizona paying a big penalty . Yes. And my husband also owns his own business and cannot afford to offer insurance to his employees and his employees were also in the independent market. Just getting too much. And i had individual insurance for 25 years since i started my business, but i have always been in the individual market and on what is right. You know, i took responsibility for myself and son Coventry Health care because im a business person. Health expenses to affect money that could be going to my business now having to go to a health expense. You know, i was in my mid20s when i said, you know what, we have always got to get square with this. So i have. Pres. Trump thank you very much. Still this year. Pres. Trump the people of arizona have been hit very, very hard at least 116 . ,here is the bad news. It is going to go up more this year. If we repeal it, nobody is going to know that and the press is going to say how wonderful it we miss obamacare. That is a problem, the biggest problem i have. It would do them a big favor, but it is not the right way. Go ahead. Mr. President pres. Trump go ahead. 2009, when the Affordable Care act was going through congress, what became the Affordable Care act i was , working for the Democratic National committee at the time. I resigned my position because i could tell that the democratic bill that was going through publicly fundd to abortion and that was not something i could go along with. I resigned my position, working focusesfoundation that on building a culture of life, protecting religious liberty in health care, limiting the public funding prohibiting the public funding of abortion. As an africanamerican, i am a graduate of a university of law. Pres. Trump thats good. Thank you, mr. President. All of our human and civil rights that we believe in as americans, and share as americans, the right to health care, the right to medical care, to housing, to all of these different things, are illusory if the right to life is not defended with maximum determination. 17 million africanamericans, it has been shown, have been aborted since roe v. Wade. I gave several speeches in michigan telling folks to vote for life in the general election and im really happy you are here to continue the bipartisan belief that there should be payer funding of abortion, and also really to support your effort to show that the patient human person should be at the center our Health Care System. Not the government. The patients be the center. Thank you. Pres. Trump thank you. I appreciate it. Great job. Thank you for inviting me. I run a nonprofit called healthy tennessee and across tennessee, i am a trauma surgeon. What we do we look forward to hosting you, sir. Yes, sir. We have Large Community events appalachia,al across tennessee, and it is really a grassroots effort which is something you understand better than anybody, we go help people, help folks with preventative medicine, educating folks. That is what we do. The one thing i have been seeing across tennessee is that folks really cannot afford these rising premiums. What they are doing is paying the tax penalty because it is cheaper and works out better than paying for the insurance. Problem that a big we are seeing across the states. So, thank you so much for what you are doing to tackle this problem. Pres. Trump this is a big problem and the way out of the problem is to do the plan that we are going to get done. We will get that done without penalties, too, by the way. The other thing about what we are talking about is we really have a threephase plan. They only want to talk about the first phase. The first phase is the most basic of phases and then you have phase two, largely done by the secretary, and the third phase is a lot of the bells and whistles, but they dont want to talk about the bells and whistles so they are really comparing something to something that will not be there for long enemies and we had to do it that waves because of congress. I would love to do it all in one package but if you did it that way, it cannot get done. So were going to get something done that is were to be terrific. Preciate it thank you, dr. , very much. I would like to thank you i appreciated. Wouldyou, doctor, i like to thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. I am in the farming industry and my wife and my daughter have their insurance supplied by their work and i buy my own. I have seen increases since obamacare to the tune of about 5,000 a year just for me. And i have considered taking the option of the penalty. My problem with the penalty though is that if i opt out of the program and by a private buy a private plan because im a healthy man, if i take that option not only is my income penalize, but my wifes income as well. She makes a considerable more amount of money that i do, but she has endurance. I do not think she has insurance. I do not think that its fair. The rate increase is just astronomical. Im in the county that has only one option, tennessee, and i have a 540 a month premium for the 7,000 outofpocket adaptable before i see any help at all. Highn have to pay up premium for a plan i do not need or want. Pres. Trump will you be able to continue in the years to, if you keep going like this . They are dropping out every day the supplies and every county. There are 35 counties in tennessee that have no option at all right now. I dont know what those folks do. Pres. Trump you know what that means . That means somebody is going to make a lot of money, you know that . They are going to make a lot of money off you. Youre not going to make it, they are going to make it. There are people very happy about your situation. Well, i appreciate it. Thank you, joe. Doctor . I am a physician in texas. Thank you for allowing me to be here. What im saying is that a lot of patients really are not adequately covered by obamacare. There is a rise in premiums and in deductibles, i took the patients from the hospital and they are shocked to get a 20,000 bill and to find that they are responsible for 6,000 of that because their detectable is so high and that is a situation that cannot continue. Underid expansion obamacare really does not cover folks either, because many people are not accepting it anymore in the outpatient setting so folks who have chronic medical illnesses, like my cancer, my wife is a Breast Cancer survivor, and most of her treatment was as an outpatient, very expensive outpatient care. Most physicians dont except medicaid. Accept medicaid. The folks you have obamacare insurance really are inadequately covered as well are payingy extremely high premiums and then having to pay extremely high debt doubles. Pres. Trump they dont even reach the high deductibles . They do not unless they have some sort of serious medical problem and they are in the hospital. They do not even reach the deductible often times. It is unfortunate, so i really appreciate it. Thatlly, i read the bill has been produced that is coming out of the house now, and i really like a lot of the changes in it. I think it is going to correct a lot of the issues that obamacare has had, so i really appreciate what you all are doing. Pres. Trump i appreciate it, doctor,. Thank you. I am from wisconsin. I am a nurse, i am a mom, and i am part of a huge group of middleclass families that were. Mpacted by the aca before aca we had insurance that , was eventually canceled and i , had written a letter to our senator just asking him what do i do . Do i quit my job completely so that we can obtain a subsidy . A job that i love as a nurse at a hospital that i love . Or do i uproot my family and try expenses thatwith dont even cover that medical pres. Trump the obamacare forced you to actually in a sense, forces you, economically, and almost potentially, to get another job . Right. Pres. Trump even though you like your job . Right. I ended up getting a higher earning Fulltime Position at the hospital i worked at, but that came up in price because i was working three days a week and spending time with my small children who are my number one priority, and after the aca, i was forced because we could not afford a premium of 1200 per month and a deductible that did not cover anything to find pres. Trump you mean the deductible was so high that eventually unless you had a really big problem, you would not even be able to use it . Correct. We are still in that boat. I would adaptable is six to 500, so if i have a child who so if imely 6,500, have a child that is extremely sick, it will cost me. Just last week, my daughter had a fever, and a center to school for three days. And i been devastating sent her to school for three days straight. It has been devastating. Pres. Trump you really do not have insurance if you think about it. All right. Thank you very much. Good luck. Thank you. Pres. Trump yes, sir . Thank you very much for hosting us. I had to start with something as i was leaving the