On Tuesday, MSNBC's Morning Joe turned to former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean to trash the Republican repeal and replacement plan for ObamaCare. Host Mika Brzezinski introduced the segment by reading off President Trump’s tweet concerning the bill: “President Trump marked the release of the bill with a tweet. Reading this. House just introduced the bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare. Time to end this nightmare.”
She continued by complaining that no one from the White House or any representatives wanted to come on the show to speak about it and said to Dean: “We would love to talk to the people who put this together, and the White House because they are so proud of this, but there's nobody who wants to talk about it, nobody. Not on person. Not one person wants to have this conversation about something they have done because -- Howard, what do you think?”
Dean retorted: “Well I think it's time to end the nightmare, but not the one Trump is talking about.” Brzezinski replied “This is the nightmare. This is it! This 45 days has been a long nightmare and it's not over.” Brzezinski then gave Dean the go ahead to speak about the issues with the new health care plan, he obliged: “So here are the problems with this. First of all, approximately 15 million people would lose their health insurance, the majority of which are in states that voted for Donald Trump, the big majority, because of the Medicaid piece of this.” With a snide tone, Brzezinski asked: “So is the problem perhaps that there are people who have health care now who would no longer get health care on the new Republicans' plan?” Dean replied, “Right.”
Political analyst Mark Halperin added: “And they won't say how many.” Dean answered: “Well the estimates – they don’t say how many but the people who know what they are talking about think it's about 15 million.” MSNBC political contributor Mike Barnacle asked, “Have you had a chance to go through the brief outline?” Dean explained: “I've had a chance to go through it but not a chance to really sink my teeth into it.” Barnacle responded asking: “Okay, so let me reiterate again and ask the question again that you just probably answered. Will the same number of people being covered now by ObamaCare, will the approximate same number be covered under this bill, this proposed bill? And, will the coverage be as fully available as it is now to customers?”
Dean remarked: “Neither of those is going to happen. The estimate is that by 2020, 15 million Americans will have lost their health insurance as a result of this bill, mostly as a result of the phasing out of the Medicaid.” Sarcastically Brzezinski retorted, “Gosh, who knew it was this hard?!”
Later, introducing another segment, a clip of The Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert played. The clip consisted of Colbert making jokes at Trump’s expense concerning the wiretapping accusations and his tweeting habits. Colbert said: “Saturday morning while Trump was in Florida. Out of nowhere he tweeted, terrible, just found out that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism. And just like that, the White House had to reset their sign back to zero.”
When the clip ended, the camera was on Brzezinski. She looked around the table and pleaded with the panelists to help her laugh too, since this “nightmare” has been so unbearable for her: “Yeah -- Everyone, I’m glad you’re laughing. I'm so glad. Help me out. Help me.” Barnacle exclaimed, “Oh you need to.” Brzezinski bemoaned,“I can't. I really can't."
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This is the full exchange that took place on March 7:
MSNBC - Morning Joe
6Am Segment
6:28:41 - 6:36:38MIKA BRZEZINSKI: So House Republicans are out with their long awaited bill that would dismantle and replace ObamaCare. And you know – Usually we've got like a huge line of people when they roll out something, they want to talk about it. You know? They want to– this is what we've got, here it is. Right? Nobody from the White House, the principles and nobody from GOP leadership has made themselves available to talk about this on any level. The proposed bill called the American Healthcare Act was released last night by a pair of house committees. The GOP plan eliminates the requirement for individuals to purchase health care. It also sets a 2020 deadline to begin restricting the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion and expands the incentive to use so-called health savings accounts. The Republican plan would provide tax credits to encourage people to buy insurance. That's a change from ObamaCare where subsidies would help offset the cost for lower earners. The proposal also includes a provision to strip all federal funding for Planned Parenthood for one year. The plan does keep some of the more popular aspects to ObamaCare including an assurance that people with pre-existing conditions keep their insurance and people under the age of 26 would be allowed to stay on their parents coverage. President Trump marked the release of the bill with a tweet. Reading this. House just introduced the bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare. Time to end this nightmare. So joining us now, former Governor of Vermont and former chairman of the Democratic National committee Howard Dean. We– would love to talk to the people who put this together and the White House because they are so proud of this, but there's nobody who wants to talk about it, nobody. Not on person. Not one person wants to have this conversation about something they have done because, Howard, what do you think?
HOWARD DEAN: Well I think it's time to end the nightmare but not the one Trump is talking about. So here’s the–
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: This is the nightmare. This is it! This 45 days has been a long nightmare and it's not over. Go ahead.
HOWARD DEAN: Here, so here are the problems with this. First of all, approximately 15 million people would lose their health insurance, the majority of which are in states that voted for Donald Trump, the big majority, because of the Medicaid piece of this.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: So is the problem perhaps that there are people who have health care now who would no longer get health care on the new Republicans' plan?
HOWARD DEAN: Right
MARK HALPERIN: And they won't say how many.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: They won't say how many so–
HOWARD DEAN: Well the estimates– they don’t say how many but the people who know what they are talking about think it's about 15 million.
MIKE BARNACLE: Just, so– let me- have you had a chance to go through the brief outline?
HOWARD DEAN: I've had a chance to go through it but not a chance to really sink my teeth into it.
MIKE BARNACLE: Okay, so let me reiterate again and ask the question again that you just probably answered. Will the same number of people being covered now by ObamaCare, will the approximate same number be covered under this bill, this proposed bill? And, will the coverage be as fully available as it is now to customers?
HOWARD DEAN: Neither of those is going to happen. The estimate is that by 2020, 15 million Americans will have lost their health insurance as a result of this bill, mostly as a result of the phasing out of the Medicaid. And the states that didn't take--
MIKE BARNACLE: So Kentucky, West Virginia–
HOWARD DEAN: It’s Kentucky – this is going to get hit really hard, West Virginia going to get hit really hard, Arkansas–
MIKE BARNACLE: Ohio–
HOWARD DEAN: I really–
BRZEZINSKI: Gosh, who knew it was this hard?
HOWARD DEAN: The most interesting thing we haven't talked about is that there is a provision in there which is theoretically unrelated, which gives insurance companies a huge windfall. Because there is today a cap over how much deductibility you have over CEOs salary. It is lifted. So there is now no tax for a corporation on money you that you pay the CEO over half a– million dollars. So if you're making $26 million and you’re the head of AETNA, all that's tax-free to the corporation now. So basically they’re taking money from people on Medicaid in Kentucky and West Virginia, which voted for Trump, and giving it to CEOs of health insurance companies and every other CEO in the countries. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable.
BRZEZINSKI: Republican congressman Justin Amash called it ObamaCare 2.0 on twitter and Senator Rand Paul had a similar take, tweeting quote: Still have not seen an official version of the house ObamaCare replacement bill but from media reports this sure looks like ObamaCare lite. Paul also published an op-ed with the chairman of the freedom caucus, Congressman Mark Meadows calling for a full repeal before taking up debate on the replacement.
SENATOR RAND PAUL [CLIP]: We should repeal ObamaCare but we shouldn't replace it with ObamaCare lite. There are a lot of previsions that I think are still going to be in this version that are ObamaCare lite. There continue to be subsidies. They just rename them. They call them refundable tax credits but it’s still giving you someone else's money to buy health care.
MARK MEADOWS: We don't really get rid of the Cadillac tax all together. It's still in there, it just comes back in in eight years. And so we really need to look at some amendments to make sure that we get rid of the taxes. We put something on President Obama's desk just a few months ago. And to suggest that what we put on President Trump's desk, you know, sets a new entitlement, keeps some taxes, doesn’t real all of ObamaCare, we've got to do better.
BRZEZINSKI: Some senate Republicans are also uneasy about how the draft bill addresses Medicaid. Four members of the GOP says it does not do enough to protect those in the program or provide necessary flexibility for states. Rick, you're a Republican, so–
RICK TYLER: You want me to explain it?
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah! What I want you to do is like pretend that you are out this morning to talk about the great bill that has been drafted. I want you to give it your best try-
RICK TYLER: I think you have a fascinating point because if you're going to roll out something this major, which is the repeal and replacement of the bill, you would want to have done a whole communications run up to the replacement of the bill so that the majority of Americans were so excited- and they are split. Look, half the people want to get rid of it and half the people want to keep it. It all depends sort of which bracket you fall into. In other words, some people have done well on ObamaCare because it's much more affordable and some people have done much worse. And many millions of people lost their insurance because of ObamaCare but they got a replacement plan. So, Dr. Dean you say that 15 million people lose their insurance but, wouldn't those people be able to go back and buy insurance on the free markets?
HOWARD DEAN: Normally the answer would be yes except these are the Medicaid people. They don't have any money to begin with. So even because— Medicaid was expanded-
RICK TYLER: And those are in the states where they expanded Medicaid. Not everybody did that so-
HOWARD DEAN: Well, yes but there were a significant number of Republican governors who did expand Medicaid. Ohio was one of them.–
RICK TYLER: John Kasich, right.
HOWARD DEAN: And that– as was the case, which when we did this 20 years ago in Vermont Medicaid is actually the best vehicle to expand people’s health care.
BARNACLE: Yeah
HOWARD DEAN: It’s in– relatively inexpensive. Everybody complains about the cost because the cost of health care goes up. It is easy to administer and states actually administer, not the federal government. So that's where the real hit is going to be. You're right about the confusion and the people who pay too much and stuff like that but the Medicaid population has done well.
BRZEZINSKI: Right
HOWARD DEAN: And that is half of the people who got insurance got it through Medicaid expansions and half of that is going away.
MARK HALPERIN: They’ve laid down a marker here, and they’re not being honest about whether there are winners and losers, because there are, the same mistake the Obama administration made. You have to be- have to have an adult conversation with the country and say here is who is going to do better and who is going to do worse, they haven’t done that. Politically, this marker, no appeal to Democrats. You could imagine that the Republicans would have said we want to make this bipartisan. Same mistake President Obama made, totally a partisan effort. You see, as you’ve read, some conservatives against it. Some more moderate Republicans are against it. There's no perfect bill. You’re never going to unite the Republican party on the first pass. But again, I think their chances of getting this through the house and through the senate are slightly higher than I think people are talking about, because they have no other option
(...)
7AM Tease
7:00:16 - 7:01:01CLIP FROM STEPHEN COLBERT: Saturday morning while Trump was in Florida. Out of nowhere he tweeted, terrible, just found out that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism. And just like that, the White House had to reset their sign back to zero.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yeah- Everyone, I’m glad you’re laughing. I'm so glad. Help me out. Help me.
MIKE BARNACLE: Oh you need to.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: I can't. I really can't.
RICK TYLER: Millions of American depend on us to start the day right, we should have a little laughter.
MIKE BARNACLE: You need, in this day and age with everything that's going on, you need two things, you need a little laughter and you need a lot of baseball.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yeah–
MIKE BARNACLE: That helps.
