the next guest offered a key amendment that helped collect enough republican votes to pass the bill. thomas mcarthur as in the mcmcarthur amendment. could you briefly explain what the mcarthur amendment is? it does two critical things. three really. it restored the essential health benefits back to the federal standard. but threaten it does two things. it balances the need to make sure that people are people with preexisting conditions has coverage which is a commitment we made and i made and two allows everyone else s premiums to come down, which is a commitment that the last administration, president obama made and it unfortunately has been a total failure. premiums have skyrocketed and now we have 23 million people that simply can t afford it and millions more at risk of losing what they have today. so that s what i was balancing. ainsley: congressman, you ares best guest to have on this
build up, get the public ready for this and get public opinion behind this. as far as we know, the amendment that they ve introduced doesn t change a lot of parts of this bill that other members didn t like and whether the public will bump it above 17%, which is what it has been polling at remains to be seen. right now if you re looking at the landscape, some of the members that say no have every reason to say no because the public doesn t like it. the mcmcarthur amendment is essentially if your state has a democratic governor or centrist, you can keep the coverage as it is now. a more conservative state has the ability to opt out that your state doesn t like. you create a state-based approach under a federal guideline. conservatives from south carolina and alabama think our governor will change the policy. new jersey or massachusetts, our governor won t. the question is, can they get to whatever it is with the special leks 215, 216 to pass a bill in