Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price insisted on Sunday that President Donald Trump is still committed to his promise of “insurance for everybody” despite estimates that the Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act will leave millions more people uninsured.
“He said ‘We are going to have insurance for everybody,'” CNN’s Jake Tapper said. “There’s no study of this bill that suggests it will provide insurance for every American.”
He cited the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that 24 million people would lose their insurance over the next 10 years under the repeal bill.
“Given the fact that the President promised insurance for everyone, how do you justify to the millions of voters who believed President Trump that there would be insurance for everyone when there clearly is not going to be?” Tapper asked.
“The President is committed to that, as am I,” Price said. “The fact of the matter is, this bill that’s moving through Congress right now is simply the first step in this process.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) scoffed at that plan in an interview later Sunday.
“That ain’t gonna happen. It’s their so-called three-bucket solution, which is all the good stuff is in bucket three,” he said. “I’ve called bucket three the sucker’s bucket.”
