Was Trump joking on health care — AP SPIN METER

“Even if the American health care act passes the house this week, the chances of it getting through the Senate in its current configuration are pretty slim”, Potter said. She’s a senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News. Each was created to address issues that critics have said have kept health care costs, and those for insurance, inflated, as well as stifling innovation in the insurance industry.

Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said he wanted lawmakers to delay a planned upcoming two-week April recess to work on the bill.

MARY AGNES CAREY: Thanks for having me.

Older Americans would have had to pay more, sometimes thousands of dollars more to get health insurance. “Most of all it’s a victory for anyone who believes affordable health care is a human right”. “So we’ll take a look at it when they get it a little more developed”. Some people are on Medicare. Humana has already announced it intends to leave the exchanges altogether. What will the rates be like?

In the world in which we actually live, issues and interests are readily configured as weapons that serve the goals of competing parties. Personally, I’m happy that Trump and his cronies failed to repeal Obamacare, but another four years of political gridlock does not sound appealing.

The law has its problems – but it is far from “exploding”, using any reasonable definition of the word. Are you struggling to pay its premiums or deductibles?

CAREY: Premiums, exactly. Premiums have been climbing.

Critics maintain the move would be too costly, but independent analysis of similar legislation found that 95 percent of US households would pay less than the current system of insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays. Those things have been adding up. But also implored the left-of-centre party to work with him in the future on healthcare and other policy issues where they could agree.

So they do want to get rid of the mandate. It’s been very expensive. One consulting actuary put it this way, “Medical inflation will continue until doctors decide they have enough money and don’t raise their fees”. So the thought is looking at 2018, what will happen? I mean, one of the ways that the system has been stabilized is by requiring people to have health insurance somehow, and that has expanded the pool of people in the system.

“It wasn’t going to be flawless from the get-go”, she said. They will find out in time that the services they think they get for nothing – but which the whole people of the United States would pay for – are also worth nothing. It’s not their health law. You can’t really get rid of it entirely through regulation.

“It does need its fixes, I totally see that”, said Inge Hafkemeyer, 57, who credits the law’s subsidies for containing her costs as her home-based event-planning business took off in Mission, Kansas, a Kansas City suburb.

But here’s the takeaway for me. Gloating only makes that more hard. “And it’s going to take work from all elements of the Congress”. But you have big, rural states, like Alaska and Tennessee and a lot of states in the South, that could teeter into collapse if you make the policy decisions that are generally going to decrease enrollment and make insurance companies less excited to be part of the marketplace. You’ve been talking about some of them over the course this conversation. “We can then discuss these suggestions in our caucus and be prepared at the earliest possible time to go forward”, she wrote.

“I think if you watch the tape it was a lighthearted moment”, Spicer said of Trump’s comments.

They’re ungovernable. It caught my attention when former House leader John A. Boehner predicted what just happened a few weeks ago.

Trump told the senators that he hoped the next vote would be more successful “because everybody really wants the same thing, we want greatness for this country that we love”. How will that change, if at all?

MARTIN: That’s Mary Agnes Carey. This philosophy follows the notion that, if government provides universal health coverage through taxes, individuals will depend on government to bail them out of their responsibility for personal health care.