Conservative activist Grover Norquist said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is admitting what Democrats previously had been denying: that Obamacare will eventually move to a single-payer healthcare system.
"For years they've denied that's what they want," said Norquist, appearing Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." "At least now they're telling us the truth. They believe this will fail systematically into single payer."
Fellow guest and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile admitted that most Democrats want single-payer health system, but said they compromised with Republicans by settling for an individual mandate in the Obamacare law.
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Reid had said
in an interview last week with the Las Vegas Sun that the country has to "work our way past" insurance-based healthcare. "What we've done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever," the Nevada Democrat said.
Norquist also disputed claims that Republicans have held 40 fruitless votes to defund Obamacare.
Norquist admitted there have been 40 votes in the U.S. House of Representative concerning the Affordable Care Act, but only three of them were to actually repeal the law, he said.
Critics have cited the "40 votes to repeal Obamacare" as a useless exercise because the Democrat-controlled Senate would never pass such a law and that President Barack Obama, who pushed the law, would never sign it even if they did.
Besides the three votes to actually repeal the entire law, Norquist said, "The others were to amend it and fix it. Six of those, which repealed pieces of Obamacare that were clearly not functioning, Obama actually signed."
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