Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead,” while discussing the increasing costs of the Affordable Care Act referred to as Obamacare, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) said voters should be mad at “Republican officeholders” who refused to do anything other than vote to repeal Obamacare.
Partial transcript as follows:
JAKE TAPPER: Let me ask you on the subject of Obamacare, one of my relatives in Minnesota, a constituent of yours, voted for Obama four years ago, saw her health premiums sky rocket. I know it’s a problem in Minnesota. As a result, she voted for Trump. How much do you think Obamacare might have ultimately hurt Hillary Clinton?
SEN. AL FRANKEN: I think that hurt. I think a number of things hurt. Look, that is about the exchanges, so your relative is probably getting her health care through the exchanges, and this is something that people have a right to be mad about, but the people they should be mad at, really, are Republican officeholders who refused to do anything other than vote to repeal the ACA, refused to — made it more difficult for insurance companies to be in the market by — this gets down to the weeds, the risk corridors. They basically did everything to undermine them. Now we’re going to get into a little bit of the weeds of health care, and I hope that President-Elect Trump, you know, informs himself about what — how health care works in this country. We need to, if we’re going to repeal and replace, we need to replace it with something that doesn’t take health care away or insurance away from 20 million people, that doesn’t take it away from people who have preexisting conditions.
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