Health and human services secretary and avowed Obamacare hater Tom Price spoke at Tuesday's White House press briefing of the current regime’s support for Paul Ryan's Trumpcare bill. And he let slip the real Republican priority when it comes to healthcare policy. Spoiler alert: it’s not health care!
Q: Can you guarantee that this plan will not have a markedly negative impact on the deficit or result in millions of Americans losing their health insurance?
Price: What I can see is that the goal and the desire that I know of the individuals on the Hill is to make certain that this does not increase the cost to the federal government.
Full stop. Next question. He doesn't even acknowledge the fact that millions of people are going to lose health insurance. Just completely glosses over that one. By the way, it's not a great reflection on the White House press corps that they didn't follow up on that omission.
Never mind that the huge tax cuts in the bill would dramatically reduce revenues, and that all the gains made in Medicare financing would be lost, and exhaust the Medicare Trust fund by 2024. Which would be expensive, to say the least.
Watch Price completely ignore the question of millions losing their health care below.