Health Secretary Tom Price says he has no problem with pre-Obamacare health insurance system

Price said repealing Obamacare won't be bad because insurance companies can "dust off how they did business before"

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published July 17, 2017 8:12AM (EDT)

 (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Tom Price, who serves as secretary of Health and Human Services under President Donald Trump, admitted Sunday that he has no problem with the mass suffering that existed prior to the passage of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act.

When asked by Jonathan Karl of ABC's "The Week" about the widespread opposition to the Trump administration's health care plan, Price said that "it's really perplexing, especially from the insurance companies, because all they have to do is dust off how they did business before Obamacare."

Price added, "A single risk pool, which is what they're objecting to, is exactly the kind of process that was — that has been utilized for decades."

When Karl asked Price about the fact that many doctors are opposed to the current bill, Price responded, "The challenge that we have is that the bill itself isn't the entire plan. It is a significant and an important and integral part of The plan, but it's not the entire plan."

Similarly, when Karl asked about how no governor has unequivocally supported the new bill, Price insisted that "what they will tell you, and what they've told me, the vast majority of them, almost to a person — not quite but almost to a person — is that what they need is flexibility."

Even independent of his views on health care reform, Price is also facing scrutiny from his critics in a very different way. The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 filed a complaint against Price earlier this month, accusing him of donating $40,000 to an opposition research group known as America Rising, which subsequently "promoted research and videos promoting Price’s confirmation."


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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