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Wrong. this bill takes care of people with preexisting conditions, it doesn't take people off of medicaid, what it does it freezes the medicaid expansions but this is a bill that's going to take care of the american people and i believe it will bring down premiums. >> okay, so let's first talk about preexisting conditions. how is it going to take care of preexisting conditions? are you talking about the tax credits that will make up for the increased premiums if you have a preexisting condition? >> no, we put $138 billion in this bill, there was a 100 billion to begin with but we added 30 bill...

The second issue being that it creates the conditions for potentially going back to having health insurers charge people who are sycamore money. potentially shutting them out of the system altogether. and finally, the bill eliminates the individual mandate, which is meant as a mechanism under the affordable care act to attract healthy people into the risk pool. and it doesn't really replace it with any other mechanism. so i think to me those are the three fundamental issues that need to get addressed. >> so in your position as an insurance provider here, paul, you basically saying in a market ...

The latest inventions. do you know what they cost? do you know what cancer treatments cost? $100,000 a year. if everybody is paying the same price to cover that premiums are going to go through the roof. so the new bill, with a waiver, creates an option that you could fund a high risk pool which somebody could go to. if they were in a gap they could go there and pay a higher premium which, by the way, the government could supplement. >> eric: let me bring byron in. i want you to weigh in on the media treatment of what's going on here. they were very, very anxious to jump on donald trump first ...

Pre-existing is different than guaranteeing an affordable rate. is the idea that people with pre-existing conditions could be charged higher premiums than other folks, is that a nonstarter for you as you look forward? >> in the patient freedom act, we actually allow -- have community rating, if you will. those of a certain age would all be charged the same amount of money. so we addressed that fact. >> so again -- >> so when you say nonstarter, that's kind of an absolute. for example, maine has an invisible high risk pool. dr. gupta spoke about how they never work. and this one actually worked...

You on behalf of my organization, faith and freedom coalition, that had absolutely nothing to do with our support for the legislation. it is good to cut taxes and lift the burden of regulation and taxes on small business, which this does. it is good to lower premiums, and by restoring some of the high-risk pools in many of these states, don, that were done away with by obamacare, we can take those patients who are sick or who are likely to get sick because they have previous conditions, and put them in a risk pool where we backstop the liability of insurers and in some states like maine, that'...