Barrasso who helped craft the plan. Robert muellers ability to be impartial. It would be make it so that insurance before that you more choices. That was a mandate so you arent forced to buy something that the government wants you to purchase or says you got to purchase. You get the choice of individuals across the coverage is right for you and the family. In the medicaid system, what we do is you need the flexibility to be able to provide the coverage that you think is most appropriate for your constituents, your population, and set of a topdown washington knows best policy. Its in a much better direction because of the patients in senate and patients and doctors will be making, not washington, d. C. Brit let to us by a viewer, chris writes does the senate bill address those americans who fall within the coverage gap between medicaid and obamacare . What about them, mr. Secretary . Precisely, it does a much better job. Remember right now, 28 million americans are uninsured. 6. 5 million of them have said or forced to pay 3 million in taxes and penalties to the privilege of not purchasing what the government provided. With the senate bill does is every single individual between zero up to 350 at the popular level auto be able to have some type of tax credit that will allow them to purchase the kind of coverage they want. Tax credit, or refundable tax credit, or nobody will fall through the cracks. We want a seamless transition for those moving from even medicaid to the individual market or medicaid to the employer sponsored market. So individuals are able to maintain the type of coverage they want for themselves. Brit the senate bill is similar in many respects to the house bill. It was scored by the cbo is leaving 27 million on short over the a time. What is your response to that . Of leading people out . Two major points of this. The Budget Office is a pretty good job of saying when something is going to cost. Theyve been woefully inadequate and being able to predict what kind of coverage. For example, they said that right now obamacare would cover about 2324 million people, and fact its about 10 million people. They are off a significant factor. We believe they are off by a huge factor here as well because they dont get any credit for individuals purchasing some type of insurance. The cbo says it is incredible insurance. Second point is the entrance of the entire plan, the failure of the entire plan that we are doing at the department of health and Human Services is to make sure that individuals have the opportunity to purchase the kind of coverage they want for themselves, not that the Government Forces them to buy. Between market stability and prices come down and make it so deductibles are not so high that you have Health Insurance card that have care. We believe that we will get more individuals covered that are covered right now. Brit it will be interesting to see what the cbo says about that. Let me ask you this question. What do you say to senator heller of nevada who came out this week and said he can support the bill and its present form because over time the medicaid changes you are making what it leaves fewer people able to afford coverage that are now getting it or would be getting it through medicaid . What do you say to him . I think medicaid isnt the only vehicle to be able to purchase coverage or have coverage. He wants to make certain that every single american has access to the kind of coverage they want. The plan is to make it so that individuals are asked to back eligible for medicaid, then again theres that seamless transition to the individual market. But that market is more robust because of the type of changes within the senate bill and other kinds of things at the department to provide greater choices at a lower cost with that individual and small group market. Our goal, if you are not eligible in this new construct but you are eligible for the kind of coverage and had the kind of subsidy, financial assistance, to purchase the coverage. Brit let me come actually from a somewhat different angle, the angle where rand paul is coming from and he is not alone in this. Perhaps others in the senate as well. His point is you dont repeal and replace obamacare here, you leave most of the key elements in place. Preexisting conditions, young people can stay on their parents insurance by as late as 26. The subsidies which are a key part of obamacare are all largely intact here. This doesnt in fact do the job of repealing and replacing obamacare. What do you say . What i tell him, at the penalties go away. Right now the government is forcing people to buy coverage. The privilege were not purchasing that coverage. That will go away. That is not obamacare. Medicaid actually becomes much more flexible for state so that they can design a program that works for them as opposed to washington telling the states what they want. Its not obamacare. The taxes that are in place, solely to build a huge government fund, those go away. Thats not obamacare. What we are trying to do here, admittedly, is to thread a needle in make it so that the president says every single american has access to that kind of coverage that they want, ensuring that preexisting elements are covered, ensuring there are no lifetime cap, entering the individuals have choices that are necessary as of the system is responsive to people, to patients, not responsive to government. Brit you mentioned that the penalties were not having insurance goes away, which suggests that people with preexisting conditions are covered. Anybody who wants to simply wait until they are sick to buy coverage and then be covered. That obviously is an issue since you need Healthy People in the program to pay for the coverage for people who are ill. What is the incentive in this bill, if any, to get people to go ahead and purchase coverage when they are young and feel healthy and its in a rational choice not to have a . Its a great question. How do you get young Healthy People to purchase coverage so that concludes that . The answer is you provide the Insurance Companies the opportunity to sell something to young Healthy People that they want to buy. Not that they say the 6. 5 million folks out there say we will write a check so that we dont have to buy what washington tells us to buy. We provide the kind of choice. Before individuals were able to purchase the kind of coverage that was responsive to them, fit their lifestyle, their system, their situation and life. Thats the way to get folks to buy coverage and what they want to purchase as opposed to what the government tells them to. Brit everyone is going to be thinking about this week and we will take a presently was seven nurse barrasso and durban. Five republican senators have announced their misgivings or four or so others that share misgivings when various you can only afford to lose two, you are down five or maybe more. How do you get from where you are now to the 50 votes you need . If you listen to what those five said, and we talked with everyone of them, and i know the Senate Leadership has as well, and the president has talked to the folks. They will tell you, and i think it was part of your question before, we want to be able to support this bill. We believe that it could be made better in a certain way. Those conversations are ongoing. That the nature of the legislative process and thats what weve been working through this week. Brit they are coming at you from both sides. You have ted cruz and rand paul who are worried about it for one set of reasons and then you have the other senators who come out that have misgivings for another set of reasons. Arent you in danger if you please one group of losing others and so on . Arent you have a pretty little delicate structure here that you risk upsetting to pick up books . There is no doubt about it. There is a needle to thread. The president has talked about it and had some democrats come along and recognize that there are nearly 40 of our counties across this nation only have one issuer Insurance Company providing coverage. There we counties across this country that wont have any Insurance Company and providing coverage. Your premiums going up, deductibles going up, folks of the insurance card but dont care. Our friends on the other side of the aisle come up with those challenges, why are they coming to the table to help out . Brit secretary, we have one of their leaders coming up next and i will ask the question. Thank you for being with us. Cap next, senators dick durbin and John Barrasso on where they stand in the battle over both care reform in the senate. Stay with us. And hey, unmanaged depression, dont get too comfortable. Were talking to you, cost inefficiencies and data without insights. And fragmented care stop getting in the way of patient recovery and pay attention. Every single one of you is on our list. For those who wont rest until the world is healthier, neither will we. Optum. How well gets done. So new touch screens. And biometrics. In 574 branches. All done by. Yesterday. Banks arent just undergoing a face lift. Theyre undergoing a transformation. A data fueled, security driven shift in applications and customer experience. Which is why comcast business delivers Consistent Network Performance and speed across all your locations. Hello, mr. Deets. Every Branch Running like headquarters. Thats how you outmaneuver. Okay, i picked out my dream car. Nows the really fun part. Choosing the color, the wheels, the interior, everything exactly how i want it. Heres the thing just because i configured this car online doesnt mean it really exists at a dealership, but with truecar, i get real pricing on actual cars in my area. I see what others paid for them, and they show me the ones that match the car i want, so i know i can go to a truecarcertified dealer and itll be right there waiting for me. Today, right now. This is truecar. Brit the pressure is now on Senate Republicans who took a big step this weekend able to repeal and replace obamacare. But does that Health Care Plan has a votes to pass . Joining us to discuss it, dick durbin and John Barrasso, who helped pass the pram. First you senator durbin, let me picked up where secretary price left off. Is there a single democratic senator that you can advise who might vote for this plan . No, not as written. I will tell you two things from your interview with secretary price. I asked him ten days ago and a hearing before a committee, and have you seen the republican plan, a part of the discussion . He said he hadnt seen at all. This is the man responsible for implementing it, so we are going to vote this week on changing the Health Care System for america without any public hearings, without the publication of the bill, without any discussion debate, and then we have this expedited amendment process. It is really disgraceful. Brit i understand your procedurals, but lets talk a little bit about whats in the measure into the plan as it was announced this week with 142 pages or something. What would it take, enter judgment, to get some democrats to come over and vote for this plan . Take repeal off the table. The other thing that wasnt mentioned in the earlier interview, whats driving us is not Health Care Reform, whats driving this is a tax cut. The republicans we insist on about 700 billion for these people in america in pharmaceutical companies. Thats what the republicans had to put in the plan to make it work for republicans, and then they took the money out of health care, out of medicaid, and thats always a 23 million americans at losing their Health Insurance. Those are the highest income category to get the tax break. Lets talk about repairing Affordable Care act as it exists. Under, what you say to the objections . It is not on really Health Care Reform or Obamacare Repeal place. This is a big tax cut for rich people. Is absolutely wrong. The crisis is getting worse, obamacare is collapsing every day. I was talking to nurses and patients yesterday, theres an urgency to act. We are down to one Company Providing insurance in wyoming, the crisis has skyrocketing. Thats why we have to do something. We need to do with the people are asking for, or just stabilize the Insurance Markets. Senator durbin doesnt want to talk about the fact that in illinois, they are way down the number of people even selling insurance and prices are way up. If you want to eliminate the mandate, you have to buy a government approved product, get rid of all the taxes. If focus on the fact that this is health care for people, many people and wyoming allotted under obamacare. They had insurance they like and could afford. The democrats are not good enough for us, it was good enough for them, and they could afford it. Brit let me press you on senator durbins point which is repeal all the taxes here, tax cuts naturally benefit tend to graduate to the people to pay more taxes, which of course the more wealthy people. On the other side of this, over time, medicaid funding will diminish. Therefore the argument is made, this is repealing and replacing obamacare on the backs of the poor, what do you say to that . Obamacare raise taxes on every american who uses health care in america. They put it on over the counter medicines, prescription medicines that are so often used for the disabled population the most. It is been a very cool taxing on obamacare. Thats what they want to talk about. We want to eliminate all of the taxes on people that buy Health Insurance. Everybody using the Health Insurance, the cost of that has actually gone up by the taxes under obamacare with regard to medicaid. I am a doctor who took care of every medicaid patient that there was a came to me in wyoming, as a state legislator, i always believed we could do a much better job if we could just have control of that money and actually help more people with the same amount of money without all the washington. Local control which is the wyoming state senate. The amount of dollars going to medicaid, today on out continues to go up year after year. Its on senator refers to a cut, only washington is getting more each year, something that you can see the cut if it doesnt go up as fast as you like it to go up. Brit let me turn it back to sender during. It is a question about the growth in medicaids sending been expending. Our budget problem has attributed to huge parts by the kind of programs that medicaid represents. With its exponential growth, are we in a situation where something has to be done to curb the growth of medicaid and other programs like it . Let me tell you, my friend John Barrasso, he is my friend, we talk about wyoming. Over the weekend, the head of the wyoming Hospital Association came out against senator barrassos bill and the cbo for the Medical Center said it would hurt everybody in wyoming. Thats what set us in his home. She also said she didnt read the bill so she could read it first. Its impossible to find. You couldnt find the bill until only last week. Brit let me get back to my point. May i please continue about medicaid . The republican of wyoming would like to expand medicaid with the legislature wont let him and the reason we need to expand it as if to make sure people who are currently working hard in lowpaying jobs and have no medical benefits have an opportunity through medicaid to have insurance for their families. What we have this increase . Because so many people are working hard every single day and dont have Health Insurance. Medicaid is their ticket to Health Insurance and republicans have decided to put a cap on the amount of money, regardless of age, and the republican governors like the governor of nevada, the governor of ohio, governor of illinois this is a disaster for our estates to do it. Brit nowhere in your comments to hear an answer to the question. It is not medicaid expanding at an unsustainable rate . Does not something have to be done for budgetary reasons, long term and short, to curb the growth of this program and others like it . Let me tell you what is expanding at an unsustainable rate and that is the notion that people would not have Health Insurance under this republican approach. Lets face the reality. Even if you dont have medicaid, even if the republicans are successful with coming back on it, people get sick and go to the hospital in a state like kentucky, one of the largest expansions of medicaid, if they eliminate the medicaid funding, it will be 165 increase in kentucky and uncompensated care. It will be medical care that get to these people and others will have to pay for it. Republicans wont fix that reality. Brit senator barrasso . Medicaid was set up for poor children and people with disability. Obamacare used medicaid as a dumping ground for a body, working aged individuals that were raised to modify medicaid when he was governor of indiana to do a wonderful job of that with the local control that we are asking for all across the country. The growth will continue for medicaid. We need to do it in a responsible way. But to talk about the cuts, its just not the case. When they put all of these additional people onto medicaid, it made it that much harder for the poor women, children, and people with disabilities to get the treatment they need because now more and more doctors are saying i just cant see any new medicaid patients. Obamacare actually made it worse for patients who were originally designed to be held by medicaid. Brit senators durbin . I can tell you this approach will devastate medicaid. You know who will be hurt . Rural hospitals and wyoming and in illinois. My Hospital Association over the weekend in illinois said this is devastating. We are going to lose jobs in rural hospitals in illinois. Thus the trump constituency that is going to be hurt by this approach on the republican side. Secondly, we will see premiums go up dramatically,