Price: Getting Health Bill Through Congress "A Fine Needle" To Thread

STEPHANOPOULOS: And we are joined now by the president's point man on health care, the Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Tom Price. Dr. Price, thanks for joining us this morning.

TOM PRICE, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: Thank you, George. Good to be with you.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, last week, you said that no one would be worse off financially under President Trump's plan. Since then, we have seen the CBO report saying that up to 24 million people over time won't be able to afford their health insurance.

And they say it's going to be a real double-whammy on older, lower income Americans. They're going to be charged higher premiums, get less in tax credits that they do now in subsidies. So, do you stand by that claim?

PRICE: I do, as a matter of fact, because what the CBO was looking at, and what they were charged to look at, is just one portion of the plan. The overall plan is not just this piece of legislation before congress right now, which I think is an integral part, an important step in all of this. But it's the second phase of all of this, which is ongoing as we speak, but it includes all of the administrative changes that need to be put in place, and that a third phase, which also is ongoing as we speak, which are multiple other pieces of legislation that round out the plan and make it so it fulfills the president's promise of repealing and replacing Obamacare and putting in place a patient-centered system where we get patients and families and doctors making medical decisions and not Washington, D.C...

PRICE: Well, it's a fine needle that needs to be thread, there's no doubt about it. But you mentioned working with Democrats on that -- on that third bucket, and we sure hope so.

We've been reaching out to individuals in both the House and the Senate on the other side of aisle and look forward to their ideas and hopefully their input and their support as we move forward.

They know that the current law doesn't work. They know that premiums are going up. They know that deductibles are skyrocketing. They know that a lot of people have health coverage but no health care because they can't afford the deductible.

So we're asking men and women of goodwill in the legislature, in the legislative branch, to come forward and work with us to solve the challenges that the American people see in their health care system, again, so we get a health care system that works for them. Not government, but that works for people.