The GOP health plan proposal "makes sense from the financial standpoint" as an alternative to Obamacare, a law that will eventually run the country into bankruptcy, Sen. Orrin Hatch said Thursday.
"We've got to come up with a consumer-based approach that really gets rid of Obamacare, but also makes sense from the financial standpoint," the Utah Republican told MSNBC's "Daily Rundown."
"What people don't realize is, the Obamacare is going to run us right into bankruptcy. We won't be able to pay for it," he added.
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The GOP alternative, called the Patient Choice Affordability, Responsibility, and Empowerment Act, or CARE, was introduced by Hatch and co-sponsored by Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Richard Burr of North Carolina. He said his bill would keep some of the more popular aspects of Obamacare, including health coverage for pre-existing conditions and children being able to stay on their parents' health plan through age 26.
Hatch said the bill takes out the costly mandates, taxes, and regulations in Obamacare, and shifts the management of healthcare to the states. He described it as a "consumer-based program" that saves money because it gets "rid of the bureaucrats ... in Washington, and all of the government processes that just eat up funds right and left."
Obamacare was "not going to work," Hatch said, and explained one problem with the law was that it pushed costs into Medicaid. He said the GOP bill would "reform Medicaid and make it work again."
"In the future, [Medicaid] is going to be unfunded, and we've got to find some way of ... completely rehabilitating Medicaid. And we do that in our bill," he said.
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