ROBERT DRAPER: All of these Republican proposals basically block grant Medicaid to the states. But some of the governors, Republican governors who have embraced Medicaid expansion do not want to see this thrown away. And it's axiomatic, it's well understood that block granting is going to leave a lot of people out, millions of people out. I'm not sure President Trump wants to read headlines in the newspapers about how millions of people under Trumpcare are now on the street without coverage.
[…]
WILLIE GEIST: Is it fair to say what’s sort of become gospel, which is that the Republicans have voted to repeal all or part of the Affordable Care Act more than 60 times, I don't know what the number is any more, but have never had a plan ready to replace it? That's always been the argument. Have they had a plan at any of those points?
DRAPER: They have had plans here and there, but they haven’t coalesced around any of those plans. One of those plans was put together by then-Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price, who’s now the head of HHS. Paul Ryan again has had a plan of his own. But most of these have been piecemeal. And I think the most significant thing, Willie, is that Obamacare, for all of its flaws, has changed the paradigm. Now there are millions of more people on the rolls and there’s no guarantee that any of these other plans will keep those same people on the rolls.
JOE SCARBOROUGH (CO-HOST): And Tina, as I underline all the time, millions of people on Obamacare, and many of them Trump supporters.
TINA BROWN: Many of them are Trump supporters. They have embraced it. They are now getting coverage. They are now able to have preexisting conditions covered. There is just no way -- it really is a scandal to me, an absolute scandal, that the Republicans that have made this their war cry for six years, and, yet, they have not been ready to come something. And in a way, this is exactly the kind of issue that Trump is never going to be bothered with because he hates detail. It’s not something he can solve with, quote, a deal, which is really the only prism through which he sees political action.
