Labrador booed over 'nobody dies' comment

[music playing]
- You are mandating people on Medicaid accept dying.
You are making a mandate that will kill people.
RAUL LABRADOR: No one wants anybody to die.
You know, that line is so indefensible.
Nobody dies because they don't have access to health care.
[booing]
JAKE TAPPER: Nobody dies because they don't have access
to health care, Congressman Raul Labrador, Republican of Idaho
at a town hall yesterday with me now
to discuss health care and much more.
Former South Carolina Democratic state Representative Bakari
Sellers, Republican Congressman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee,
former Obama White House Communications Director Jen
Psaki, and former Ted Cruz Communications
Director Amanda Carpenter.
Congressman, let me start with you.
Nobody dies because they don't have access to health care.
True?
MARSHA BLACKBURN: We all know that individuals have
and need access to health care.
And that's one of the reasons we're
trying to get in this process and clean up what has happened
through the Affordable Care Act in the marketplace,
and the narrowed networks, and the lack of access,
because the stories that come into our office
every single day will just rip your heart out,
people that can't get access to the care.
They've got a card, an insurance card,
but the product is too expensive to use, lack of access
to physicians who will take it.
And that is why it is essential that we work to fix this issue.
My hope is that our colleagues across the aisle
are going to come work with us to get it fixed.
And they should.
JAKE TAPPER: Bakari?
BAKARI SELLERS: I mean, I agree with your part
about the heart-wrenching stories
that we're hearing and the fact that the Affordable
Care Act needs to be reformed.
But I think it's almost perverted to say that somehow
taking away insurance from 20 to 24 million people
from stopping the expansion of Medicaid.
MARSHA BLACKBURN: But that's not a right number.
BAKARI SELLERS: Well, what is the number?
MARSHA BLACKBURN: That is not a true number.
BAKARI SELLERS: What is the number?
What is the number?
MARSHA BLACKBURN: There are only 9 million people.
BAKARI SELLERS: But how many people are going to lose
insurance because of this bill?
MARSHA BLACKBURN: Bakari, this is the issue,
there are only 9 million people in this Exchange.
BAKARI SELLERS: You don't know that.
But you don't know the number, and the Medicaid.
MARSHA BLACKBURN: You see, the problem
is, you didn't know what the number was with Obamacare.
BAKARI SELLERS: We do know the number with Obamacare.
MARSHA BLACKBURN: No, you do not.
No, you do not.
BAKARI SELLERS: The problem, Congressman,
that the American public recognizes
is that you as a sitting member of Congress voted on a bill
and you don't know how many millions of Americans
are not going to have insurance because of it.
But even more importantly, one of the things that I would
want to work on--
MARSHA BLACKBURN: And the lie of the decade was the Obama lie.
And it's not working.
And it has to be fixed.
If we don't, we know that there are 1/3 of the counties
in this country that right now only
have one insurance provider.
We know that there are people who
were facing not having access to any health
insurance marketplace.
JAKE TAPPER: Let's let Bakari make his point.
BAKARI SELLERS: This doesn't help that.
In fact, you're going to have people
with preexisting conditions whose
care is going to skyrocket.
But if you want Democrats to help to get to the point
that you were making earlier, and many others and John Kasich
was making, one of the things Democrats wanted to do
was take this further.
Because there are about 19 states,
18 states which are not expanding Medicaid, which
have chosen not to do that.
And those people are still going without care.
And we were hoping that there was going to be something
enticing to those states through cuts
or whatever to bring those people in.
And that didn't happen. JAKE TAPPER: Amanda?
Let's let Amanda weigh in.
AMANDA CARPENTER: Here's the biggest problem for Republicans
and Democrats before Obamacare and post Obamacare,
every member of Congress is now an insurance
adjuster, a doctor, having to process
people's health problems.
It's like you're calling your member of Congress
and saying, hey, look at this thing on my foot,
what are you going to do about it?
They have to take this out of the congressional realm
and put patients in contact with their doctors.
Listen, I was on Obamacare.
I had to get out of it and now I'm on the Medishare.
And now I'm actually talking to the doctor
about the price of care.
We're going to keep going around about preexisting conditions.
We're going to keep going around about all
the different benefits until we find a way to get patients
involved in the process and we actually start
lowering the cost of care.
Insurance means nothing unless you lower the cost of care.
JAKE TAPPER: Jen, one thing I wanted to ask you,
as a member of the Obama White House, is, it seems to me--
and I said this to Dr. Price--
that there was a reluctance to acknowledge that there were
going to be winners and losers with Obamacare,
for political reasons to sell the plan.
And we're seeing the same thing play out with Trumpcare.
There's a reluctance to acknowledge there
will be winners and losers.
Of course there will be winners and losers.
And of course there are going to be some winners.
Premiums will go down for people who buy plans that
cover fewer things, et cetera.
But there are also going to be losers.
And there does seem a reluctance to acknowledge that.
JEN PSAKI: Sure, look, I think when we look back
and we think about how we sold Obamacare in the beginning,
there are a lot of lessons learned.
One was to sell individual pieces of it,
to talk about people who would have to maybe put
a little bit more skin in the game, young people, people
who are healthy.
But the problem is that the losers
in this version of the health care bill
are people who need extra help.
There are people who have disabilities.
There are people ranging from people
who have kids with asthma to people who have had a child.
A lot of us at this table, we're fortunate.
We can afford health care.
But what this is really about is the people who rely on,
depend on the guarantee that coverage of preexisting
conditions would help them with, that the Medicaid expansion
is helping people with.
And that's basically a different view
of what health care should be.
JAKE TAPPER: And let's talk about what's
going to happen in the Senate.
I'm going to come right to you.
Because listen to Amanda's former boss,
Senator Ted Cruz, talking about this.
TED CRUZ: For seven years the Republicans
have been promising if only you elect us,
we'll repeal Obamacare.
I think the consequences of failure would be catastrophic.
JAKE TAPPER: Do you agree with that, Congressman, the idea
that if the Republicans in the Senate don't pass something,
and then if the two bodies don't come together
to pass something, that's going to be horrible for Republicans
in 2018?
MARSHA BLACKBURN: I do agree with that
because people are burdened by the high cost of insurance.
They want this issue resolved.
They have expectations that Congress
is going to resolve this issue.
They want a patient-centered health care system.
And they expect us to deliver on this
and working through those expectations is important.
Now, I will say this, back to Bakari and Jen's point,
please remember, in 2010 when President Obama had the Blair
House Health Care Summit, invited Republicans to come,
we went and we took our ideas.
He didn't want those ideas, except for preexisting
coverage and children up to age 26,
but we accepted that invitation.
And I think it is imperative for Democrats
to accept the invitation to work with us
as we look for how we are going to change
and reform a health care insurance and delivery system.
BAKARI SELLERS: And I think that if you look at things
such as cost transparency, like you we're talking about,
the lower cost, reining in costs of pharmaceutical drugs,
if you start looking at those things which
are creative but sound in health care practice,
you will get Democrats to buy in.
MARSHA BLACKBURN: That will be great.
I look forward to it.
BAKARI SELLERS: But what you won't get Democrats to buy into
is steadily increasing the number
of preexisting conditions that won't be covered,
knowing that you're going to put forth a plan of high-risk pool
where you don't fund it.
MARSHA BLACKBURN: That is not being done.
And that is not being done.
BAKARI SELLERS: And Congressman, we have two CBO scores--
two.
We don't have one from the final bill
that you all just voted on.
What those scores tell us is that between 20
and 24 million people are going to lose their insurance.
MARSHA BLACKBURN: CBO has been so wrong on their numbers,
and you know that.
BAKARI SELLERS: So now CBO is wrong.
JAKE TAPPER: Amanda, let me ask you,
because we heard Governor Kasich talking about how he wanted
leverage when it came to renegotiating prices
and there was nothing in here that would
put the pharmaceutical industry in a position
that they don't like.
Isn't that an opportunity for President
Trump, who bad mouthed big pharma during the campaign?
AMANDA CARPENTER: Yeah, and there's
absolutely opportunity for Republicans in the Senate
to work on these issues, where I think
they'll get a ton of traction.
And so you know, Mitch McConnell says he wants to start over,
I don't necessarily view that as a bad thing.
I think that's an opportunity to infuse some of these better
ideas that the House didn't get around to doing
as a part of that debate.
I don't understand the messaging from the White House
on this, saying, pushing this to a point of brinksmanship
over and over.
I think Republicans would be much
better off if they said, listen, this
is going to be a hard process.
Health care is important.
It may take five votes.
It may take 500 votes, but we are going to get this done.

Labrador booed over 'nobody dies' comment

Latest Posts