President-elect Trump’s selection of Rep. Tom Price to lead the Department of Health and Human Services could put aspects of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act, at risk, the White House acknowledged Tuesday.
“What is clear is that the president-elect has chosen to nominate someone to be his secretary of health and human services who is an ardent opponent of the Affordable Care Act and somebody who says he is committed to repealing it,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.
“It’ll be his job to implement the president’s plan, not his own,” Earnest said of Price’s former proposals for replacing Obamacare.
Earnest encouraged the media and the public to judge the Trump administration’s alternatives to Obamacare on five key metrics: the number of people who remained covered by health insurance, the growth in healthcare costs, the fate of “consumer protections” like the pre-existing condition ban, the impact on Medicare, and the impact on the national deficit.
“We have heard comments from the president-elect and from congressman Price about some of the ideas that they say would work,” Earnest said. He declined to predict whether the incoming administration’s proposed reforms would be successful by the standards he outlined.
“Reality has a way of intruding on your ability to do everything that you’d like to do,” Earnest said. “I think President Obama’s record of doing the things that he’d like to do is quite good.”
Earnest argued Obama has always “indicated an openness” to accept ideas about his healthcare legislation from Republicans or Democrats if he found them productive.
“The only kinds of ideas that have been put forward by the Republicans … have actually been ideas for undermining the law,” Earnest said.
Trump’s transition team on Tuesday said Price’s priorities at HHS would include allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines and administering Medicaid at the state level.
