Hoyer Discusses Working with President Trump and Republicans to Improve the ACA and Fund the Government on MSNBC's Steve Kornacki

“[President Trump] has not submitted a bill to accomplish what he has told the American people he wants and that is everybody has insurance at a lower cost and better quality. I’ve said if he has a bill like that, send it down and we'll be very receptive but it's not easy, it is complicated. He was right at that point in time, and clearly his party is a deeply divided party on this issue. But one of the things I want to make sure he doesn't do, and I hope he doesn't do, is undermine the Affordable Care Act's operation on behalf of the American people right now. We need to continue the cost-sharing subsidies; we need to continue the personal responsibility to have insurance; and we ought to expand Medicaid in the states that don't have it. The states that have it have 7% lower costs on increases in premiums. So I hope the President takes those steps first and then we're certainly willing to talk about how we make the Affordable Care Act work better or to accomplish what the President says he wants to do—health insurance for everybody.”

“If the Trump Administration does not take actions affirmatively to undermine America’s health care that they have through the Affordable Care Act, it will be okay. Can we make some improvements in it? We certainly can. Would we be willing to work with President Trump on that? Yes, we can. But we ought to make the Affordable Care Act better, not undermine it. That's what I’m fearful the Administration might do so that their assertions that it's failing would, in fact, be made to happen by their actions.”

“Look, I think Americans want the Congress to do things that help them – help them get jobs, help them keep their health care, help their families succeed. And if the President is willing to come forward with efforts that we think do that, then certainly we're going to talk. But what he’s done so far has been very negative for the country, very negative in terms of his working with his own party. They had a tremendous failure last week. They said they had a bill to replace [the Affordable Care Act]. It was a bad bill. It would have made health care in America worse. It would have made health care more expensive, and 24 million people would have lost their insurance. So my base is angry. I’m angry, frankly. I’m very disappointed with this President. But my responsibility to the people I represent and to the country is if we can do things that are positive for the country, positive for our people, make our country more secure, more healthy, better educated, well then certainly we have a responsibility and intention to cooperate in achieving those objectives. But very frankly, all we've seen over the last five, six years is negative activity on behalf of too many of the Republicans and that will be met, obviously, with opposition. We're coming into a period of time now where we need to fund government. We have ten days left to go. And the Republicans still haven't come up with a plan to do that. So that they're going to need our help on doing that and we're prepared to do that if they have a responsible alternative.”