Tom Price: Everybody Should Have Healthcare, Just Not Obamacare

on September 28, 2017 in Washington, DC.
WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 28: U.S. Heath and Human Services Secretary Tom Price participates in an event to promote the flu vaccine at the National Press Club September 28, 2017 in Washington, DC. President Donald ... WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 28: U.S. Heath and Human Services Secretary Tom Price participates in an event to promote the flu vaccine at the National Press Club September 28, 2017 in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump was critical of Price's use of private chartered jets for official travel and said that he was 'not happy' with Price. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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Despite his ardent opposition to the Affordable Care Act, former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said that everybody should have access to healthcare, according to a Monday CNN report.

“Nobody wants individuals not to have coverage. We want everybody to have coverage,” Price said on the podcast, “The Axe Files.” “Having everybody have coverage is imperative at this point.”

He reportedly added that he does not think that the ACA provides people with “affordable, accessible” coverage.

Price helped lead the unsuccessful charge to repeal the ACA last year, and maintains that Trump’s moves since to slash ACA advertising money and to shorten the enrollment period were not attempts to damage the program, calling that train of thought “an illogical conclusion.”

Price resigned from the administration in September 2017 after his ethically suspect practice of using private planes for government work became known.

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  1. It’s like big brother speak from 1984. Without a mandate, how can risk be spread and costs contained? “I don’t want any of those things, and I want it to be affordable for all.” Yea, and I want wings…

  2. Fucking guillotines. That’s what we need.

  3. “Price said that everybody should have access to healthcare.”

    This is true especially for unemployed people.

    Like Price.

  4. Price is a physician right? Now that he is back in the private sector he probably hears from other physicians and hospital executives that the uninsured are killing their chances of making spectacular profits. So now he is all in favor of everybody having funded healthcare. It is all a matter of perspective.

  5. Typical BS GOP conflation. People want “affordable and accessible” HEALTH CARE. They know those adjectives are favorable and what people want about HEALTH CARE, but they attach is to “coverage” so that can argue that this issue of far lesser important to people is what they can claim to have delivered.

    “Coverage”, i.e., insurance, is always pitched as “affordable and accessible” because they are in the business of taking premiums, not in the business of paying claims. You can make insurance very affordable and accessible. You just have to make it cover less, fight the claims with fine print, limit or loophole benefits, and so forth. You can offer just coverage via email or over the phone, making it EXTRA “affordable and accessible”, but worthless as to covering the financial risk of actually helping people get or stay well.

    Obamacare offered people both affordable and accessible coverage AND care, but wiping out the junk policies that actually did little to nothing to deal with the financial risk of health events and just plain bad luck. The GOP is simply heartless or, worse, greedy and deceptive, in backing or allow or even promoting the notion that cheap coverage is the answer, not comprehensive coverage with the costs spread across society and, particularly, the wealthy paying a lot more toward it because they can.

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