Chairman Arrington rebukes Obamacare subsidies on CNBC’s Squawk Box: “Stop throwing good money after bad”
WASHINGTON, D.C.- This morning, Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) joined CNBC’s Squawk Box to discuss today’s Democrat-forced House vote on extending fraud-ridden COVID-era Obamacare subsidies and Republican solutions to actually make health care more affordable for Americans.
Watch the full interview HERE
On the Democrats’ push to extend COVID-era Obamacare subsidies that Democrats themselves made temporary:
"When the Democrats had total control and created this additional layer of Obamacare subsidies, they designed them to expire after COVID. In fact, they made the Green New Deal tax subsidies permanent. So, they had a choice, but they made these expire and they are fraught with fraud and waste. According to watchdog groups, [there are] tens of billions in fraud and millions of people are on the program ineligibly. We're also subsidizing people making hundreds of thousands of dollars. ...We need to address affordability in healthcare, no doubt. We know how to do it. We should do it in reconciliation, but we should start by stop throwing good money after bad."
On Republicans’ work to make life better for Americans:
"Trump models this better than anybody. You do the right thing, and the people will reward you for it. They will reward you for it because when you do the right thing, the economy and our families and our country get a positive response. We know the policies that will work for our country and the American people. We're seeing the policies that were embedded in the Big Beautiful Bill already yield positive results. Our economy is growing. Interest in the long term and short term is coming down. More money in people's pockets because wages are outpacing inflation for the first time in several years. ...I think we have more work to do and we have the most consequential tool in the toolbox in budget reconciliation to do that. It would be a travesty to leave that in the toolbox and to try to coast into November."
On the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act:
"The bill that we passed before the break was an all-Republican bill on health care. CBO, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said it would bring premiums down by 11% and save taxpayers 30 billion dollars. That's one of many reforms that we could put in play to help our country."
On the solution to make health care more affordable:
"We can't use rhetoric to just oppose something that we know has doubled premiums and deductibles with Obamacare and these additional COVID subsidies. What's our solution? We have it. We know that fundamentally about 80% of premium increases are the structural problems in Obamacare. ...We know there's waste, fraud, and abuse. There's more of that to go after. Certainly, I think the American people are awake to that. We can make the private sector insurance market more competitive—offer more affordable products—and then we can look at the systemic problems, the anti-competitive behavior because of perverse incentives that have created basically big medicine monopolies in pharma, in hospitals, in insurance companies. So, we need more competition.
"As Reagan said, the government isn't the solution. Government's the problem. In health care, we need competition, innovation, etc."
