Democrats who claim thousands of people will die if Obamacare is repealed are lying to try to keep the healthcare bill alive, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Tuesday.
"I think the Democrats' irresponsibility is totally unbounded," Gingrich told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" program. "This notion that the Republicans want to kill people, it's really, it's almost pathetic that the Democratic Party has no new ideas, no new solutions, takes no responsibility for the disaster that they passed with Obamacare. All they have is wild charges that no serious American is going to look at as an actual problem."
On Wednesday, Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who ran in 2016 as a Democratic presidential candidate, commented that if Obamacare is repealed, "the horrible and unspeakable truth is ... thousands of our fellow Americans every single year will die."
His comments were echoed by Democrats such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who said "hundreds of thousands of people will die if this bill passes, and Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, who said that 1,000 to 2,000 people will die "if you cut 750,000 people from Medicaid, so that means you're killing 1-2,000 people."
"What they just said is a lie," Gingrich said Tuesday. "We have 8,000 federal community health centers in this country. They don't even count as part of this bill. Eight thousand places where people can get help."
There also are many "new approaches and new techniques" when it comes to providing healthcare, said Gingrich, including in Kansas and Maine, where reforms are working to provide better care for more people, at a lower cost.
Gingrich also said there are some misconceptions when it comes to the House Republican healthcare bill.
"After all the news media talking about cutting Medicaid in the house Republican bill, I did some research," said Gingrich. "It actually goes up 20 percent over the next 10 years.
"Now, think about that. All of this talk about cut, cut, cut. No. No. It's a 20 percent increase over the next 10 years. So half the Republican problem or more than half is the communications problem ... they're actually putting 20 percent more into Medicaid over the next decade. That's a serious effort in the right direction."