FOX "Your World with Neil Cavuto" - Transcript: Debt Limit

Interview

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NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Gee, and all this time, I thought this health care debacle was on the president. It turns out Republican governors are at fault, or at least the ones who are not buying into these exchanges or apparently drinking Kool-Aid.

Yesterday, you heard the president rip them a new one. Today, meet the gov. who is happily prepared to rip right back, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin.

Now, Governor, what he's saying about you and some of your colleagues who are resistant to these exchanges is that you're making it tough for your citizens. What do you say?

GOV. MARY FALLIN, R-OKLA.: Oh, I say the whole plan has been a debacle.

It doesn't matter if you're in a blue state or red state. The Web site is not working. The president made several promises when the health care law was passed. You could keep your insurance if you liked it, your premiums weren't going to go up, and you could keep your doctor if you wanted that. And that has just simply proven to be true.

The website certainly has been a debacle and has not worked. And that's been no matter what state you live in, whether you're in a Republican state or a Democrat state. It's been even. And then you have two million Americans that have been notified that their insurance plans that they have had are no longer going to be available to them.

Whether you live in a Republican or Democrat state, it is hitting us all equally and it's been bad for America.

CAVUTO: But, to be fair, long before these problems materialized, and to be fair to you, you saw a lot of this coming, you were reluctant on this exchange thing and you were not alone. Why? And I would imagine you're all the more so now, so where do you stand on this?

FALLIN: I -- I'm very thankful -- Oklahoma chose not to do its own state-based exchange. We weren't going to put into place a system that we didn't think was workable. It was too complicated.

We knew there was going to be a tremendous amount of problems with the rules and regulations, because they couldn't even answer the questions for us and haven't been able to answer all the questions, as we're seeing on some of the Senate-House -- and House hearings right now, that there are more states that did not put in their own state-based exchange and let the federal government do it for them. That didn't work out.

But even the states that put in their own exchanges, they are still having problems too. So, I think we were right. We were right that the system is too complicated. It's too burdensome. It didn't have wide support in the Congress when it was passed in the first place.

I was in Congress when the bill came through. It was rolled out in the middle of the night. We started voting on it the very next morning. People didn't have time to read it. Of course, we were told we would know what it said after the bill passed. And that was not a good thing either.

So, I think we're seeing all those things that we were worried about coming to fruition now. And I'm thankful that in my state that we haven't gone along to expand the Medicaid and we haven't gone along to put in the exchange itself. We just let the federal government put in what they thought would work. And of course we were proven that -- right that it wasn't going to work.

CAVUTO: Well, it's certainly not working right now.

We will see.

Governor, always good to have you. Thank you.

FALLIN: Thank you. It's good to be with you, Neil.

CAVUTO: All right.


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