WASHINGTON _ Americans will not suffer economic harm as a result of the Republican-backed plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system, President Donald Trump's secretary of health and human services said.
"I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially" under the measure being considered by the House of Representatives, Secretary Tom Price said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Heading into a week in which the Congressional Budget Office is expected to release its assessment of the GOP plan's impact, the administration again portrayed the Affordable Care Act as a failure.
"That was a broken system," Trump's budget director, Mick Mulvaney, said on ABC's "This Week." He predicted that the Republican replacement would be "wildly successful."
Critics sharply disagreed. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on CBS's "Face the Nation," called the Republican plan "an absolute disaster" intended to create "a massive shift of wealth from working people and middle-income people to the very richest people in this country."
The Republican leadership sought to dilute the effects of the coming budget office forecast, saying it had been off base in the past in predicting the numbers of people who would be able to obtain insurance.
"The one thing I'm certain will happen is the CBO will say, 'Well, gosh. Not as many people will get coverage,'" said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., also interviewed on CBS. "You know why? Because this isn't a government mandate. This is not the government making you buy what we say you should buy."
