ROSWELL, Ga. (AP) – Carla Dent is a restaurant owner who steers her employees to federal health insurance exchanges. Eden Purdy helps poor and working-class Georgians navigate the health care marketplace. Bryson Boech is a grocery cashier recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, what the insurance industry calls a pre-existing condition.
None of the three claims to be intensely political, but all say they are concerned their congressman, Tom Price, will rip up President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law if the Senate confirms the Georgia Republican to be Donald Trump’s health secretary. Price’s Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
“I just can’t imagine they would throw out the whole thing and upset the market like that,” said Dent, whose Pastis restaurant sits in the historic district of Price’s hometown of Roswell.
A few miles away, Purdy, program director at North Fulton Community Charities, says she is “kind of in a holding pattern.” She is finishing the latest open-enrollment period for insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act. “But we have this big caveat hanging out there – big caveat,” she said.
The questions are all the more searing because of apparent differences between Trump and his nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services: Both men promise to “repeal and replace Obamacare,” but their replacement priorities may not dovetail.