At the end of the day, the House will pass the American Health Care Act, as it's the "best opportunity to deliver on our promise to repeal the awful law of Obamacare" and return control of healthcare to the states, Rep. Kevin Brady said Friday.
"We are listening, working together," the Texas Republican told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" of his fellow party members in the House. "We have a lot more in common than that divides us . . . as President [Donald] Trump tweeted out recently, we are making good progress."
Brady pushed back against a Congressional Budget Report earlier this week, 24 million people could lose their insurance coverage under the bill.
"I can guarantee every constituent of mine will have the opportunity to buy affordable health care that is designed for them, not Washington," said Brady, including "that person working their way off of Medicaid into that first job or whether it's that small business person who isn't, today, treated like a worker at a big business, or that early retiree who is too young for Medicare, but still needs healthcare."
Obamacare, he continued, is a "sinking ship" that will go down unless Congress acts.
"That's why we are acting now," said Brady. "Not to take away the awful taxes, the mandates that drive people into care they can't afford, but begin as a thoughtful, deliberate process to make sure there's affordable healthcare for my constituents when Obamacare hits its death spiral. That's the work we are doing."
It's tough to estimate how many people are struggling with plans and don't want them at all, said Brady, but "we ought to be listening to those Americans who are getting huge subsidies for expensive plans who say this isn't working for us."
In Texas there were 1 million people working on a way to exempt themselves from Obamacare, as they did not want the coverage.
"We ought to be reaching out to them, and we are, in this Republican bill to get them affordable healthcare they can use," said Brady.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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