Hoyer Discusses Postponed TrumpCare Vote and House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes' Actions with Wolf Blitzer on CNN

Interview

House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) joined Wolf Blitzer on CNN today to discuss House Republican leaders' decision to postpone the House vote on TrumpCare and recent comments by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes. Below are excerpts from the interview and a link to the video:

On TrumpCare

"Well, the bill keeps getting worse and worse and, of course, the deficit reduction the Republicans were claiming has now been halved by the changes they made. So not only are the same 24 million people going to lose their insurance, not only are you going to pay more to get less coverage, not only is the age tax in there -- if you're older you're going to pay a lot more than you do now -- but they also reduced their claim that they're reducing the deficit. So this bill just keeps getting worse and worse. If they dragoon people into voting for this bill, it's going to be a bad vote because the other thing that is happening is that it becomes more and more unpopular every hour that goes by. Quinnipiac just did a poll… that now says that 56% of Americans think this is a bad bill and only 17% of them think it is good deal… it's clear it's moving in the wrong direction for the Republicans and they continue to be a deeply divided party."

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

"We're going to make it very clear to the Members and the American people what [essential health benefits] means. It means hospital services, emergency services. It means prescription drugs availability, mental health services. Essential benefits simply says, look, we're not going to have people selling phony policies at low prices which really give no coverage. There are some things that are essential, and very frankly, when people buy insurance they think they're going to be insured, and unfortunately [if] they bought a cheap policy, they have a serious illness, they go to the hospital, and the insurance company said gee-whiz, that's not covered. And then, frankly, hey're put into bankruptcy. We don't want to see that happen. We think that the policies ought to cover what real people face in terms of expenses to make sure they're healthy or when they're sick they can get healthy again."

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

"This bill is TrumpCare and if TrumpCare fails and if they administratively and by talking down the competence in the insurance market, they will own the failure here. It will not be the Affordable Care Act's failure because the Affordable Care Act has brought prices down. There are some places where we need to fix, where choices have been limited. We need to work on that. In part, that has happened because the Republicans have undermined our risk insurance and risk sharing within the insurance industry. Because it was a new program and determining prices was going to be tough. We anticipated that, but the Republicans undermine that, why? Because they're trying to kill indirectly something that they have not been able to kill directly and that is affordable, quality health care for all Americans. And very frankly the President probably has no idea what's in the bill. He promised the American people that everybody would be covered, everybody would be covered -- not just to have access -- that everybody would be covered. They'd be covered at a lower price and higher quality. Frankly, he has not offered any bill that any fair-minded analysis would say he accomplishes the goal he set forward."

On Rep. Nunes' Actions Yesterday

"Look, I want to know more of the facts. But I think what happened yesterday was bizarre and unfortunate and was a very bad judgment on Mr. Nunes' behalf… What we need is an independent commission like the 9/11 commission, bipartisan, with subpoena power and the ability to get to the bottom of what, clearly, FBI Director Comey and others have raised as very, very legitimate questions of national security. That's what I think ought to happen. It's clear I don't think Mr. Nunes can lead an investigation that will have credibility and a bipartisan way and get to the bottom of this."

Source