Republican Rep. Mike Rogers ripped Obamacare on Sunday, questioning whether it was worth it to “disrupt” 85% of Americans healthcare to help “a few.”
The “few” Rogers refers to is the 48 million uninsured Americans, according to the Census.
“You’re punishing these people,” Rogers said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “You have 15% of the population didn’t have health insurance when this started, roughly, we think that number was high closer to 10%. What they’ve done is disrupt it for the 85% who had healthcare and their costs are going up significantly.”
He continued: “We’ve broken the system to help a few. Nobody would fix a problem that way.”
Another guest, Democrat Rep. Chris Van Hollen pointed out that the bulk of affected people seeing cancellation notices—a number that could rise to more than 10 million according to an NBC News investigation—is less than 5% of Americans who purchase insurance on their own.
“He just put out so much misinformation in two seconds that I can’t answer,” Van Hollen said after Rogers spoke.
“The individual market, which has always been broken, represents about 5 percent of the market. A lot of those people were losing their health care on an annual basis before. We’re trying to fix that,” Van Hollen said, before two representatives began talking over them with Rogers alledging that 80 million will see their plans cancelled and Van Hollen shaking his head and saying “come on, Mike.”
Host David Gregory cut both off, ending the segment.
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Jane Timm