she was and is a strong advocate of obamacare. she joins me now. nice to see you. nice to see you. let me start with a question about the republican plan and whether you accept the idea that this is obamacare-lite. do you believe they kept the architecture of obamacare in place? i m not sure what the goal is. we were rapretty clear in the obama administration what the goal was. we knew we had to change insurance rules to do that. no more pre-existing conditions. people who. reporter: were buying their insurance on their own needed help in the marketplace. you could keep kids on their parent s plan. whether you lived in georgia or california you qualified a a low-income adult on t same level. i m not sure what the goal is here. they have kept some pieces, the pre-existing condition.
and in the senate. the bill as written is not going to pass the senate. simply would not pass the senate. it s dead on arrival. conservatives say tax credits are a government give-away and the medicate expansion phased out more quickly. and then there are the republican moderates who want to cap medical funding for medicate. in ohio we have this expanded medicaid that is critical to covering people who otherwise would not be getting health care. pulling the rug out from these swrul innerable populations is not really the way we want to go. we will get we will you can go it through medicate. you can go it through some other way. t i m just saying very simply, and this has nothing to do with singular, this has to do with humanity. mr. trump promised insurance for everybody, telling the washington post there was a philosophy in some circles if
don t have coverage. i hear about patients who come into the office and they recommend something for them and they re not able to get it because the deductible is so high. i notice you ducked the aspect of whether you can guarantee that nobody will be worse off financially. i firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially in the process we re going through understanding that they will have choices that they can select the kind of coverage that they want for themselves and for their family, not the government forces them to buy. so there is costs that needs to come down and we believe we re going to be able to do that through this system. there is coverage that s going to go up. there are 20 million folks who said to the federal government, i ll pay a penalty or i ll take a waiver. i m not even going to get coverage in the system we currently have. that may be a system that works for government or insurance, but it doesn t work for people. you believe your system is goin
where are you on this? you know, i think health care is a mess. i think that as a free market person, you can t even have that discussion unless you know what the service costs. i mean, i go to the doctor. i have a daughter that didn t have insurance. she gets a different price than people who have insurance. i think we need more market spirits in competition. i certainly don t see it in this bill. but i do understand that repeal and replace would have been easier if there was a mandate. president trump won. we could argue about the mandate. right. there is a problem here. if you deal with the reality of politics, i understand phase one and phase two. if we want to fix it the correct way, i just think the politics are impossible to accomplish that. here we sit. yeah. what do you think of that, david? we may be in a position that we can t fix this if neither party is going to participate in the other party s bill. we just had an election about the working class, election where
welcome back. panelists here, rick santelli welcome back. panelists here, rick santelli from cnbc. helene cooper, pentagon correspondent for the new york times and auth are on of this book madam president. a fantastic book. stephanie cutter and columnist for the new york times david brooks. let s dive into politics. rick santelli, you re a free market guy, where are you on this and where are you on the plan? too much obamacare? too little obamacare? it s a mess. you can t have that discussion unless you know what the service costs. i go to the doctor, and i have a daughter that for a while didn t have insurance. she gets a different price than people who have insurance. i think we need more market spirits in competition. i certainly don t see it in this bill, but i do understand that repeal and replace would have been easier if there was a mandate. president trump won.