House Freedom Caucus Member Pledges Support For Health Care

Members of the House Freedom Caucus this week have agreed to support a health care plan, after opposing the American Health Care Act (AHCA) proposed by Speaker Paul Ryan and supported by the President. Although the date for a vote on a revised health care package to replace Obamacare is uncertain, it could be brought to the House floor in the next couple weeks. Georgia Congressman Jody Hice is a Freedom Caucus Member who now supports the new version of the health care bill.
“The key issue is to drive down premium costs, which the previous bill –four weeks ago–did not do. And so with what we have now, I’ve come on board because of the changes that have been made which drastically impact premium costs,” explains Hice who represents Georgia’s Tenth District, which extends eastward from the Atlanta suburbs.
“The previous bill had some good things…employer mandate…individual mandate. That’s good, but it left untouched insurance company mandates. So, an insurance company did not have the ability to offer a variety of plans. They had to stick with the Gold, Premium, that type of thing. It was not free market-based. And there’s no way to drive down the cost of premiums if the government is dictating what the plan has to be. The MacArthur Amendment helped in that regard,” says Hice.
Hice noted that some Members are still undecided, but he appeared optimistic about the bill’s chances for approval.
Turning the subject of President Trump’s First 100 Days, Hice offered high praise for the nascent Administration.
“I rate him doing an outstanding job. Again, at the end of the day, no President is ultimately going to be defined by a hundred days. He’ll be defined by the duration of his presidency. But within the First Hundred Days, we’ve got what…eleven Congressional Review Acts–by far the most in the history of our nation, which reviews have done away with multiple regulations from the previous administration.
“And the most in any other administration had been one. So those have gone through the House, through the Senate and signed by the President. We have a new Supreme Court Justice. We have Executive Orders ranging from Keystone to Waters of the US. We have our military presence in the world, seen from Syria and other things that America is back on the front line. We have our immigration declining seventy percent the first Hundred Days…and I give him an A+,” says Hice.