Obamacare Architect Emanuel: Revised Reform Plan Won't Pass

It does not look like Senate Republicans can get the 50 votes they need to pass their bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, the healthcare plan's architect, Ezekiel Emanuel said Thursday.

"If they lose three senators, they are out," Emanuel, now a Fox News contributor, told "America's Newsroom" co-anchor Bill Hemmer. "We have heard from Sen. [Susan] Collins from Maine that tweaks to the bill are not going to be enough."

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia also is hesitant because her state stands to lose a lot, as there are 180,000 people on its Medicare expansion roles, continued Emanuel.

"Plus, they have an enormous problem with opioid addiction in West Virginia, which this bill only exacerbates by cutting back on Medicaid," he told Hemmer.

Many Republicans want to slow, not cut the growth of Medicaid, Hemmer said, but Emanuel disagreed.

"Let's be clear that they are not just slowing the growth of entitlement, what they're going to do to the Medicaid program is they actually tried to throttle it and end Medicaid as an entitlement, especially to people who are working hard with low-paying jobs, otherwise relatively healthy," said Emanuel, talking over Hemmer's disagreement.

However, it's not so much important what will happen as what the effects and consequences of the actions will be, said Emanuel.

"The consequences, according to the Budget Office will be that they are going to throw 22 million people off [the roles]," said Emanuel. "Now remember, if they in fact modified a little bit, the estimates are that they will still throw 17 or 18 million people off, and most of those people are hard-working Americans."

Hemmer argued that most of the people who will not have insurance are young people who don't want it, but Emanuel called that a "false assertion."

"It's not that young people don't want to buy health insurance. It's that the affordability is a problem, and this bill does not solve the affordability problem," said Emanuel.

"As a matter of fact, it makes it much worse for two groups, one is hard-working people who are on low-paying jobs and their employer doesn't offer insurance, it removes them from Medicaid. The second is older people over the age of 50 who will have increased premiums and lower subsidies to get insurance."

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