Tom Price said on Wednesday that regulating vaccinations should be a state issue. President Donald Trump's new health and human services secretary made the suggestion at a town hall event moderated by CNN and reported on by The Daily Beast.
During the televised town hall, Price was asked, “should it be required, measles, mumps, those kinds of immunizations?” according to New York magazine.
“I believe it’s a perfectly appropriate role for the government, this happens by and large at the state-government level, because they’re the ones who have the public-health responsibility…to determine whether or not immunizations are required for a community population,” said Price.
Price only provided vague insight on Trump's plans to roll back Obamacare.
Medicaid recipients at the town hall challenged the reasoning behind the plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, noted Politico.
Brian Kline, a cancer survivor, said if it wasn’t for Medicaid he would have lost his life. He told Price that Medicaid also helped him from having to file for “bankruptcy.”
“My question for you, Secretary Price, is pretty straightforward: Why do you want to take away my Medicaid expansion?”
Kline’s question comes amid concerns that an Obamacare rollback would leave 24 million people uninsured.
Price alluded to several issues discovered in the Medicaid program that have yet to be addressed.
“We have one third of the physicians in this nation who are not seeing Medicaid patients and so if we want to be honest with ourselves as a society it’s important that we step back and say why is that?” said Price, per Politico. “Let me just suggest that it’s because the Medicaid program has real problems in it.”
“We don’t want to take care away from anybody,” he added.
Kline wasn't happy with the answer, though.
“This is not going to help me,” he said.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.