House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday blamed Republicans for painting a negative picture of Obamacare, which she said led to a muddled implementation of the law.
Health insurance enrollments, Pelosi said, suffered, because “people were deterred by the negative misrepresentations Republicans put out about it.”
The California Democrat also said Republican governors blocked Medicaid expansion in many states. “Many more people would be insured if the states had expanded Medicaid,” she said.
Pelosi said Democrats are willing to work with Republicans and President Trump to fix the failing Affordable Care Act, but only if it involves more federal funding.
“It’s not perfect,” Pelosi told reporters. “We can find ways of working together to improve it and we always learn more in implementation about what those improvements can be.”
But she rejected all of the provisions listed in the Republican proposal to replace Obamacare as possible ways to fix Obamacare, which many health industry analysts say is in a death spiral.
Pelosi said Democrats would be in favor of a preliminary Obamacare bill the House passed that was later altered by the Senate. That bill included the creation of a government-provided healthcare option.
Pelosi said Democrats would like to funnel more taxpayer dollars into the collapsing health insurance marketplace by helping more people purchase insurance plans. “We’d like to increase the subsidies,” Pelosi said.
She argued that the GOP plan to replace Obamacare is a transfer of wealth from the working class to the wealthy that will cause millions to lose coverage.
The Democratic plan, she said, allows people more freedom to move from jobs they don’t like and it helps those who can’t afford coverage.
“We have a responsibility to meet the needs of the American people,” Pelosi said. “It’s about entrepreneurship, it’s about individual aspiration, it’s about creativity, it’s about wellness.”
