Published July 02, 2012 - On the Record - Fox News
Special Guests: La. Gov. Bobby Jindal
This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," July 2, 2012. This copy
may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Republican members of
Congress are a bit hot under the collar. They are firing off a strong message
to the nation's governors. They are telling the governors not to implement
health care exchanges, the GOP lawmakers calling the ObamaCare mandated exchanges expensive
and intrusive. Do the governors agree?
LA.
GOV. BOBBY JINDAL: Hey, Greta. How are you this evening?
VAN SUSTEREN: I'm very well. Governor Scott of Florida
told us the other night that he is not going to begin developing these
exchanges. I'm curious, Louisiana, your state, do you intend to begin
developing these exchanges? If not, why not?
JINDAL: Absolutely not. We declared over a year ago we
were not going to do the exchanges. We said immediately after the court's
ruling we're not going to be expanding our Medicaid program.
I think this is a huge mistake for the country, certainly for the state of
Louisiana. We need to do everything we can to repeal ObamaCare.
Greta, let's step back and realize what they're doing. In the middle of the
greatest recession since the Great Depression, the president is creating yet
another entitlement program! We can't afford the ones we got -- $1.76 trillion
in new spending, over $500 billion in tax increases, over $500 billion in
Medicare cuts.
This is simply not affordable. It's not sustainable. You know, we used to
celebrate when we got people off of government programs. Instead, this
president seems to want to make more and more Americans dependent on the
government. Food -- you look ahead, an array of government programs -- food
stamps have almost grown 70 percent in the last five years. Now he wants more
Americans on government-run health care.
It just doesn't make sense for our taxpayers, doesn't make sense for the
state of Louisiana.
VAN SUSTEREN: Do you have any idea, apart from the other
things, like the expanded mandate, which you now can opt out of, and I
understand that - - but just the cost of setting up the exchanges. I don't
have a sense of what the -- I know many governors are rejecting it. I know
members of Congress and Senate are asking them not to do it.
But I'm curious, do you have any idea what the actual cost of an exchange
setup in Louisiana would be?
JINDAL: Well, we've rejected all the grants. We know from
other states' experiences it could easily run in the tens of millions of
dollars. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The reality is, the Medicaid
expansion -- we've calculated -- our health department calculated the first 10
years of implementation would cost our taxpayers over $3 billion. And Greta,
here's what's really scary -- over $100,000 people would then be on Medicaid
that today have private insurance.
We've seen promise after promise broken by this president when it comes to
health care. My real concerns -- not the costs of actually running the
exchanges, but what it does to premiums, what it does to employers in
Louisiana, what it does to our taxpayers.
Think about all the promises that have been broken. The president said
premiums would go down $2,500. They went up 9 percent last year, according to
Kaiser. He said that he was going to leave Medicare alone, protect Medicare,
that CMS's actuary says the cuts are not sustainable, not realistic.
He said people wouldn't lose their plans or doctors. Some estimates as many
as 20 million Americans could lose their health care, their employer-provided
health care coverage. He has made promise after promise that's not being kept
in ObamaCare, in this health care law.
I think the real cost of the exchanges will be higher health care costs,
lower quality health care, more government intrusion in micromanaging health
care. That's a big mistake. That's why we need to elect Mitt Romney, repeal
ObamaCare, and end this culture of dependence.
VAN SUSTEREN: Is the -- is your objection to this health
statute, this health care statute, that Louisiana can't afford it, or that
it's just a dumb idea, or from a -- this is not part of your ideology as to
how -- you know, big government or bigger government and federalism? Which is
it? Or maybe it's all three.
JINDAL: I was going to say, is there an "all of the above"
option? Because the reality is, those are all three great descriptions of this
law.
The reality is, is it doesn't bend the cost curve down, as the president
promised he was going to do. It doesn't put patients and their doctors in
control. Why in world do we think it makes sense to have the government come
in and take over almost a sixth of the economy?
Again, we can't afford the programs we've got. The government's already
spending 24 percent of the GDP. You know, we've got a choice. Do we go the way
of Europe? You know, our founding fathers were celebrating, they were
declaring our independence. I don't think they intended us to be this
dependent on government-run programs.
VAN SUSTEREN: Explain to me -- as I understand, the
government expansion for the first number of years will be -- the cost would
be fully borne by the federal government, and then at some point down the
road, a couple of years, that 10 percent will be paid for by your state,
Louisiana, and every state.
In the event you don't have this Medicaid expansion, the people who --
there's going to be this group in the middle who don't have any sort of health
insurance. I assume that they're going to show up on the doorstep of hospitals
around the state, and someone's going to pay for it because we're not a state
that -- we're not a country that simply looks away from bleeding people or
people with head injuries. I mean, all this stuff is going to be paid for.
So I mean, who will be paying for this if there isn't this expansion?
JINDAL: Sure. Well, two things, Greta. Right now today,
Louisiana actually has already had tremendous experience in government-run
health care. We're the only state in the country that runs our own government-
owned, government-operated hospitals. I'll be the first to tell you that's not
the best way to provide health care. And we're replacing that. We're
transitioning folks on our Medicaid program to privately-run insurance
coverage.
But here's the bigger point. We're not just talking about repeal ObamaCare.
That's the first step. We've got to replace it. Governor Romney has talked
about we do need to help people buy health care coverage. We need to make
insurance portable across state lines, across jobs. We need to help those
people with preexisting conditions, those with continuous coverage, make sure
they don't face discrimination, those buying insurance for the first time,
make sure they got high-risk pools, reinsurance to help them afford that
insurance when they're sick.
He's also outlined other reforms to the Medicare program, as well, as well
as the Medicaid program to give states more flexibility. So nobody is saying
leave these folks uninsured. What we are saying is a government-run program,
and a new government entitlement program, when we can't afford the ones we've
got, makes absolutely no sense at a time we got over $15 trillion of debt.
We're borrowing over a trillion dollars from China. We're not just
borrowing from our children and grandchildren anymore, we're literally
impacting our present, out economy today.
You know, the Democrats will try to attack Republicans. They'll try to say
this is free health care. It's not free. I think governors have to stand up
and say, These federal dollars are our taxpayer dollars, we just can't
continue to afford this spending.
VAN SUSTEREN: Governor, thank you, sir.
JINDAL: Thank you, Greta. Always great to be with you.
VAN SUSTEREN: Thank you, sir.