Sen Coons: “We should work together and find a constructive answer that moves us all forward”
Sen Coons: “I’m wide open to meeting with any of my colleagues who genuinely want to work across the aisle in a responsible way to fix what’s wrong with the Affordable Care Act”
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) joined Fox News’ Fox & Friends this morning to discuss Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Watch the full interview here.
Transcript of Senator Coons during the interview:
“I think it’s a combination of things. I think there are some real challenges in having the exchanges work in the way they were intended to provide higher quality, more accessible health care for a broader number of Americans, but I also think the uncertainty about what direction the Trump Administration is going in terms of whether they’re going to continue to enforce provisions of the current Affordable Care Act makes it unstable in the marketplace. Unfortunately, we’re in a game of ‘chicken’ right now. We can debate whether or not there’s a ‘death spiral’ or whether the Affordable Care Act is stable, but the reality in the meantime is lots of my constituents in Delaware are calling me and saying ‘what am I supposed to be doing for health care this year?’ We should work together and find a constructive answer that moves us all forward.
“If we want to keep the promises that President Trump made on the campaign trail and retain the pre-existing condition protection, and retain the Medicaid expansion, that is going to cost more money. One of the things that happened last year was that – and I know this is technical – but something called risk-corridors, which were put in place to protect insurance companies from losing money in the marketplaces, was taken away, and so if that’s taken away, and the individual mandate is taken away, a lot of insurance executives say, ‘We just can’t make money in these marketplaces.’ That’s part of what’s going on.
“One of the challenges in health care is that it’s very complicated. So frankly the solution here won’t be found by either party acting alone. There are things in the Affordable Care Act that I tried to fix in the last Congress. I introduced bills that would reduce some of the reporting and regulatory burden, and that would increase the size of the small business tax credit to help employers provide health care through the exchanges for their employees. There are other fixes we can work on that’ll help reduce deductibles and improve quality, but that’s only going to happen if we genuinely work across the aisle. That means that the current Senate Majority is going to have to stop trying to do this only on their own. The reason I predicted we might not see a Senate bill for another year is because it’s just that complicated. I wasn’t part of the Congress when they passed the Affordable Care Act, but I do think it has done great things for our country. It does have flaws that we need to work together to fix.
“Democratic leadership doesn’t tell me who to talk to. I’m wide open to meeting with any of my colleagues who genuinely want to work across the aisle in a responsible way to fix what’s wrong with the Affordable Care Act.”
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