White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney says popular consensus is with comedian Jimmy Kimmel on the issue of covering children with pre-existing medical conditions.
“Everybody, I think, agrees with Jimmy Kimmel,” he said Wednesday on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”
Kimmel made an emotional plea for ObamaCare during Monday’s broadcast of his ABC show, revealing that his newborn son has a heart defect.
Kimmel used the segment to argue in favor of ObamaCare’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions, citing his son as an example of someone who would be denied insurance under pre-ObamaCare health insurance rules.
Mulvaney, a top figure in President Trump’s efforts to repeal and replace ObamaCare, said that the United States has “enough money” to provide that insurance.
“We have enough money in this country to provide care for those type of folks,” Mulvaney said.
{mosads}Mulvaney added that Republicans are not focused on eliminating healthcare coverage for Americans.
“I don’t think the logical conclusion is that ‘Oh, by the way, Republicans are going to kick these people off of healthcare,’ ” he said. “That’s not the point.”
Mulvaney also referenced a new compromise deal in the House Republican ObamaCare replacement plan that would allow states to request waivers for the requirement that insurers offer reasonably priced insurance to people with pre-existing conditions. Instead, people denied insurance in waiver states would go into state “high-risk pools.”
“The point behind the state waiver program is that state governments know how to treat children like the Kimmel baby better than the federal government does,” Mulvaney continued.
“If we give more control to the states, they can figure out a way to best provide for children like Mr. Kimmel’s baby.”
Kimmel’s segment about his son’s medical condition quickly went viral after Monday’s show.
“You know, before 2014, if you were born with a congenital heart disease, like my son was, there’s a good chance you’d never be able to get health insurance, because you had a pre-existing condition,” he said.
“No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child’s life. It just shouldn’t happen. Not here.”