On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) responded to a question on whether the need for Obamacare subsidies shows that the Affordable Care Act isn’t driving costs down by saying that “I can concede that it’s always got to be better. Obamacare has covered and given insurance to so many people who wouldn’t have it otherwise. And so, there’s a lot of it that’s worked incredibly well, but, like anything, you’ve got to make it better.”
Host Bret Baier asked, [relevant exchange begins around 1:45] “When you hear Republicans…they say Democrats set this system up, Democrats set these price subsidies up, they are the ones that — they’re now expiring, and, yet, the fixes are coming from the other side of the aisle. How do you address those criticisms?”
Gottheimer responded, “I think the reality — as [Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY)] just said — is, come January, premiums in the district where I live in northern New Jersey are going to be up for a family of four, 175%, that’s $20,000 a year, people can’t afford that. They’re struggling already with the cost of everything, right? From their electric bills to food. We’ve got to do something about this, and we’ve been working together for months to figure out how we’re going to get a solution, right? Both extend these tax credits, but also find new ways to actually make the system better. And there’s always room to make it better, as Mike just said, and that’s what we have to work on while we’re ensuring that people don’t wake up on January 1 with a giant lump of coal in their stocking for Christmas of all of these higher premiums and saying they can’t afford health insurance for their families.”
Baier then asked, “But what about the fact that Obamacare, how it was set up, that the exchanges were set up to drive the cost down, and yet, these subsidies had to be put in because it wasn’t working? Can you concede that it’s not working to drive costs down?”
Gottheimer answered, “I can concede that it’s always got to be better. Obamacare has covered and given insurance to so many people who wouldn’t have it otherwise. And so, there’s a lot of it that’s worked incredibly well, but, like anything, you’ve got to make it better. … There are places where we didn’t do exactly everything that we should have done. The insurance companies, as Mike just said, have made off like bandits, and they’ve done nothing to actually get the prices down for folks, and I think that’s our job is to figure out ways to do that. And we’ve got fixes that we’ve been working on for months, and so this is, let’s help people out right now so they’re not stuck without health insurance for their families, and also look for ways to fix it.”
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