Fiorina: ObamaCare Spawns ‘Crony Capitalism’
TAPPER: “One other thing that you want to change is you want to repeal ObamaCare.”
FIORINA: “That's right.”
TAPPER: “I should point out that you are a survivor of breast cancer, and we're all very grateful for that. Didn't your experience show you that the pre-existing condition part of ObamaCare is crucial, that there are so many people out there like you, but without your means, who wouldn't be alive if it were not for the part of the law that says insurance companies have to take on people with pre-existing conditions?”
FIORINA: “I absolutely endorse that goal. I did at the time. But guess what? None of that has worked. Demonstrably, if you look at the results of ObamaCare, what you see is emergency room visits are up over 50 percent. Health insurance premiums are up almost 40 percent now. We're dumping more and more people into Medicaid. Medicaid is a program that fewer and fewer doctors will accept patients from. That isn't helping anyone with cancer, I can assure you. The problem is this –“
TAPPER: “The expansion of the pool allows the insurance companies to pay for the people with pre-existing conditions.”
FIORINA: “What is happening to the health insurance market right now, as we speak? And it's what I predicted. Who helped write ObamaCare? The health insurance companies and the drug companies. And guess what's happening? Those companies are consolidating. That's called crony capitalism. Let's have a big program. Let's get bigger to deal with it. And meanwhile, people are getting left on the sidelines.”
TAPPER: “There's been a lot of talk this week about maternity leave, because Netflix is now offering paid maternity leave, a full year for new mothers. You're opposed to any kind of mandated paid maternity leave. Why?”
FIORINA: “Well, when I was the chief executive of Hewlett Packard, we also offered paid maternity leave and paternity leave. The government -- for the government to tell others how to do things when the government hasn't gotten its basic house in order is not only ineffective, it's hypocritical.”
TAPPER: “What do you mean its basic house in order? The government shouldn't tell anybody that they have to offer paid maternity leave?”
FIORINA: “I don't think it's the role of government to dictate to the private sector how to manage their businesses, especially when it's pretty clear that the private sector, like Netflix, like the example that you just gave, is doing the right thing because they know it helps them attract the right talent. What I mean by the federal government not having its house in order, the federal government is in a shambles right now. It's inept. The night -- TSA failed 96 percent of the time. That's ineptitude. That's ineptitude.”
TAPPER: “But I don't understand what that necessarily means about why you oppose paid maternity leave.”
FIORINA: “I'm not saying I oppose paid maternity leave. What I'm saying is I oppose the federal government mandating paid maternity leave to every company out there.”
