Just a month into his new job, Tom Price is smack-dab in the center of a political storm.
As President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, Price — a former congressman and a longtime critic of Obamacare — is now responsible for selling the Republican Party’s controversial new plan to overhaul the Affordable Care Act to his former colleagues and the public.
At a special CNN town hall event Wednesday night moderated by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash, Price is taking health care-related questions from members of the audience.
At the forefront of the fast-moving health care debate in Washington is the House GOP bill to repeal Obamacare introduced last week, which continues to bleed support among Republicans in the lower chamber. GOP congressional leaders and the White House are furiously trying to assuage a range of concerns voiced by rank-and-file Republicans to ensure that they have the 216 votes needed for the bill to pass in the House.
Price forcefully defended the GOP bill at the CNN town hall. “We believe strongly, strongly, that the plan we put together is so much better than the one that’s there now,” he said.
One statement that Price will personally have to stand by is his recent promise that nobody will be “financially worse off” under the Republican proposal. After an audience member named Teresa Caliari expressed concern that older Americans would see premium hikes under the GOP plan, Price was asked whether he could ensure that Caliari wouldn’t be hurt financially.
He demurred, saying simply: “I don’t believe you’ll be worse off from a health care stand point.”
Also Complicating matters is a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office this week that predicted that the House GOP bill to repeal Obamacare would result in some 24 million more people being uninsured by 2026 than under the current system.
Price downplayed the CBO’s findings.
“They do a pretty good job with numbers — coverage is not their strong suit,” Price said. He also stressed that the CBO only took into account the House GOP bill while ignoring other steps Republicans plan to take through administrative and legislative actions.
“What the CBO looked at was just one third of the plan,” he said.
The CBO report also said the proposal would cut the federal deficit and average premiums would drop after a few years, but highlighted that some of the most vulnerable demographic groups including the elderly and low-income people would face steep premium hikes.
Price has been a key player in GOP leadership’s efforts to sell their House health care bill to skeptical members. A physician by training who authored an Obamacare repeal and replace bill when he was in the House, the HHS secretary has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill in recent weeks. Speaking with Republican lawmakers in both chambers, Price has sought to assuage widespread concerns about the changes to the health care system that GOP leaders are pursuing.
But that task has only grown more difficult in the aftermath of the CBO report. Moderate Republicans have grown even more wary of supporting a House bill that would lead to millions losing coverage — particularly as it appears to have no chance of getting through the Senate.
Another sticking point is what will happen to Medicaid. Thirty-one states opted to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, and many Republican governors and senators hailing from those states oppose changes that would weaken the program.
In an emotional question to start the town hall, a man who said Medicaid had saved his life and kept him from financial bankruptcy asked Price why he supported a plan that would sunset the Medicaid expansion in 2020 given that so many — like himself — had found care on it.
Price said it was wonderful the man had received the care he had, but “that’s not necessarily true for everybody.” Price argued that the program was “having extreme difficulty” providing care and that one out of every three physicians won’t see Medicaid patients.
Price also insisted that giving individual states more freedom would help “save money.”
“(Are you) going to treat healthy kids who need quality healthcare the same way you’re going to treat a disabled individual or an older individual?” Price asked.
Republican Rep. Leonard Lance, a moderate from New Jersey who Democrats believe will be vulnerable in 2018, told CNN on Tuesday that he believes the House GOP bill will fail in the Senate, and that he doesn’t want to vote for a bill that appears dead on arrival across the Capitol.
“I do not want to vote on a bill that has no chance of passing over in the Senate,” Lance said. “The CBO score has modified the dynamics.”