Gaetz answers healthcare questions without a body-slam [podcast]

Congressman Matt Gaetz was my guest yesterday on News Talk 1370 WCOA’s “Pensacola Speaks.” He stepped put a House Judiciary Committee meeting to talk about the GOP healthcare plan.

Congressman Gaetz said he believes Republicans made a mistake in dealing with healthcare using the metrics of Democrats.

“We should not be focused on health insurance, we should be focused on healthcare,” he explained.

“Right now, we’ve got millions of people in the United States of America who have health insurance. They’ve got a card that says it, but if they ever try to use that card to go see a doctor, they won’t have the opportunity to do so.”

Gaetz is concerned about the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) score———the one that apparently so upset GOP House candidate Greg Gianforte in Montana that he body-slammed the journalist who asked about it.

“I’m more focused on whether or not that legislation will increase the quality of healthcare that our constituents receive,” said Gaetz. “And if someone isn’t insured, I don’t want the government to force them to buy insurance, but I do want to have a more competitive marketplace so that people can buy the services and insurance coverage they need.”

How long will it take before people feel like they’re covered better and have better healthcare?

“Obamacare was phased in over a couple of years, and my suspicion is that unwinding Obamacare will take about the same amount of time that it took to get that law implemented,” said the congressman.

“So they’ll be tiers of repeal where this thing is peeled back like layers of the onion so that people can get out into the marketplace, and so that they have the opportunity to buy the coverage that they want.”

He said that his polling of healthcare issue in the First Congressional District has been a “mixed bag.”

“There are some folks who like Obamacare, who have Obamacare, who simply come from a liberal viewpoint and don’t want to see part of President Obama’s legacy unraveled,” he said. “Then there are others who would like this to be going a lot faster, and I’m probably within that group.”

Gaetz added, “I mean I would have voted for a one sentence piece of legislation that simply would have said all features of Obamacare are hereby repealed. That would have been fine with me.”