Obamacare Architect: Unclear to Me What Trump's Alternative is
Repealing Obamacare was a key focal point of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 presidential race. Now that Trump has been elected, Obamacare Architect Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel weighs in on the uncertain future of the Affordable Care Act.
“Ripping up Obamacare is easy to say. The Republicans over the last six years have come up with replacement ideas that they float, the most recent one being Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposal. The problem is they’re not coherent proposals,” Emanuel told the FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo.
Emanuel said despite Trump’s attacks on Obamacare, he has yet to unveil a clearly defined alternative.
“If you go to Donald Trump’s website and look for what he’s going to do on health care, he tells you he’s going to replace Obamacare with something better, but we never have enough details,” Emanuel said. “It’s unclear again to me what Donald Trump’s alternative is. He hasn’t ever laid out an alternative in enough detail to really evaluate it.”
“There’s no prominent health policy person who Donald Trump has actually had around him, and that again is a complicated area and you do need experts, you just can’t say we’re going to have something better without some details,” he said.
Then Bartiromo asked, “Do you want to work with the Trump Administration on something new?”
To which Emanuel responded, “I’m a Democrat and it’s pretty unclear to me he would even tolerate me, he may listen to ideas by people, but the fact is, you know, we are one country, we are going to have to go forward, we are the world’s superpower and health care is a big part of the economy.”
Emanuel also said he was surprised by Republicans’ reaction to the Obamacare exchanges.
“It always surprised me that Republicans are hostile to the exchanges because it’s a Republican idea and it’s a free-market idea.”