Jake Tapper, Tom Price Battle Over Medicaid ‘Broken Promise’

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Jake Tapper pressed Health Secretary Tom Price on the American Health Care Act’s cuts from Medicaid.

The exchange opened with Tapper asking, “According to the congressional budget office, the health care bill that just passed the house would cut $880 billion over ten years from Medicaid. I know that the trump Administration is excited that Medicaid will go back to the states where they have more control and can experiment and be more efficient, but without question, $880 billion fewer dollars is a cut. How is this not a broken promise?”

Price answered, “Look at the Medicaid promise that program that we have right now and one-third of physicians that should be seeing Medicaid patients aren’t. There a flaw in the program. Imagine a system that works better for patients. Medicaid deals with disabled, elderly, healthy moms and kids. and yet the federal government has said to the states up to this point you have to treat every sink gel one of those individuals exactly the same. That doesn’t make sense to anybody. So what we’re fashioning is a system that would allow the states to tailor that Medicaid program to those specific individuals saving money but also a higher level of care than they currently do. Sounds like it makes a lot of sense.”

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