POPPY HARLOW (HOST): So, you do have the American Medical Association, AB, and AARP who just slammed this in their statements last night, right? AMA came out and said sort of the first principle of doctors is “do no harm,” and this bill does that, to paraphrase. But you have one of the biggest insurers in this country, Anthem, coming out yesterday saying this, “based on our review we believe the Senate discussion draft will markedly improve the stability of the individual market,” and the CBO actually found that as well. It says, “this will stabilize the individual market.” Is that a saving grace?
A. B. STODDARD: Well, that's a macro argument if you're talking about those seniors Jackie is referring to in rural parts of these different states that are more purple, you know, center right, not far right, where senators are listening to constituents talking about how my premiums might go down, but these packages are going to offer me less, which means I'm going to still pay more. And that's more for the vulnerable, more for the elderly, more for the sick, and that is really a hard argument to make about market stabilization coming from people at Anthem when you're talking to constituents who say, I know what you're doing. You're going to lower premiums by taking away essential benefits and you're going to take away the things I had before. They're going to run me out of the market because I'm not going to be able to afford the coverage that I need, the specifics saying that you should be mandated into the coverage. So that's the difficult argument. We're not really hearing a lot of, get government out of health care arguments from conservatives these days. It's really a fight over how much a hit to Medicaid is going to affect vulnerable constituents.
