President Donald Trump was joking when he suggested he would fire Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price this week, Price said Sunday, but the joke underlines President Trump's "seriousness" and "passion" with finding a solution to repealing and replacing Obamacare amid Senate gridlock.
"It was a humorous comment that the president made, but I think what it highlighted is the seriousness with which he takes this issue," Price told ABC's "This Week." "He understands that the American people are hurting because of Obamacare. We've got over 30 percent of the counties across this nation that only have one insurer offering coverage. We've got premiums up. We've got deductibles up. We've got insurance companies fleeing the market.
"The president understands that Obamacare right now is not working for the patients across this land, and that's what he wants to fix. That's what his passion is."
President Trump said during a speech to the Boy Scouts last week Price had better see to it Congress passes a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare or else he'll 'say: Tom, you're fired' — a reference to Trump's patented phrase from TV's "The Apprentice."
"The president's passion about this is that he understands that this system may be working for Washington — it may be working for insurance companies — but it's not working for patients," Price told ABC host Martha Raddatz. "And that's where his passion.
"That's why he keeps coming back to this and saying, 'look, Senate, do your job. Congress, do your job. You've said for seven years that you were going to repeal and replace Obamacare. Now get to work and get it done.'"
President Trump has presented multiple different options on healthcare, even this week as the Senate has failed to pass anything, including: repeal and replace with the House bill; repeal and replace with various Senate GOP alternatives; a full, clean repeal; a "skinny" repeal; and merely doing nothing, allowing Obamacare to fail and forcing Democrats to get involved in the Senate vote to fix it, if not replace it.
The simple solution to allowing Obamacare to fail might be the ultimate result because of the Senate stalemate — and might be the best thing to keep Republicans from having to own the failures of the broken U.S. healthcare system — but that does not make it right, Trump had said this week.
"I think what the president said is that [doing nothing and just watching Obamacare to collapse is] not the right thing to do because it hurts people," Price told Raddatz.
". . . This system has failed. That's what the president's saying, and that's why he is demanding that Congress act. If we could fix it by regulation, we would do so. But it takes an act of Congress to take care of it, and that's what the president is demanding."
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