Former Director of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling on Monday hammered former GOP senator Rick Santorum for his continued support of the American Health Care Act, asking the failed presidential candidate, “How is [this] a just way to deal with health care?”
Santorum argued the abysmal score from the Congressional Budget Office—which projected that under the GOP plan, 14 million fewer people will be insured by 2014—was “not unexpected,” adding, “if you don’t mandate something and you’re going to cut some of the subsidies … of course, fewer people are going to get insurance.”
Sperling explained to Santorum that, according to the CBO report, “co-pays and deductibles will rise,” noting, “if you are an older American, you are a double loser because they can now charge more, but you’ll have less subsidy.”
“The point is, why are they doing this?” Sperling asked. “This is like they are fulfilling a political slogan to ‘end Obamacare’ at the expense of tens of millions of our fellow citizens, our neighbors, our friends.”
“Even the one good news in the report, that costs might be a little lower after 2020, is only meaning it’ll be lower because you’ll be getting a worse plan with higher deductibles and more co-pays,” he added.
Santorum parroted the GOP talking point that Republicans “believe in choice,” arguing people should be able to personalize their health care plans. “Little Sisters of the Poor, they don’t need maternity care,” Santorum said.
“How does the insurance market work?” host Erin Burnett asked Santorum. “I mean, you need to have kids to have society function, and if only people who are having kids have insurance to pay for maternity care when they’re having babies, that’s going to become exponentially expensive.”
“It doesn’t work without everybody paying for it,” Burnett explained.
Santorum insisted he “understands” that, but said Obamacare did a “bad job of getting younger, healthier people into the system.”
That’s where Sperling really went off, expressing disbelief that the GOP would sign on to a bill that will “hurt their own citizens.” He pointed out that the GOP’s plan to cap medicaid is not about healthcare reform, but about offering tax relief to the top one percent
“Of all the savings in this bill, are any on special interests on healthcare?” Sperling asked. “Are any on the drug companies? Are any on high-income Americans? No. All of it is on people with disabilities, in nursing homes, near-poor, who rely on subsidies and medicaid. How is that a just way to deal with health care?”
