GOP Faces Anger over Obamacare at Town Halls
CABRERA: Before the break, we showed you that anger that was shown toward a GOP lawmaker over the proposed repeal of the health care law, Obamacare, without a clear plan to replace it. What you heard at that Florida town hall is being echoed across the country as Republicans meet with their constituents. Here's another look.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shut the hell up. Shut the hell up.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have to have coverage to make sure that I don't die.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everyone here has had great points. We all want health care.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's the problem I have with the Affordable Health Care Act. There's a provision in there that anyone over the age of 74 has to go before what is effectively a death panel.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, they do. Yes, they do.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am 77 years old and I think it's unconscionable for this politician to tell me that, at 74, I will be facing death panels.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wrong, wrong, wrong.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you'll be quiet and give me an opportunity, I'll speak. Or would you rather just yell and scream and holler?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is that what you want? OK.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every American should have health care coverage, would you agree?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. You're wrong.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, children. All right, children.</s>CABRERA: So a lot of that is what happened today in Florida. J.D. Vance joining me again. He's the author of "Hillbilly Elegy, A Memoir of the Family and Culture in Crisis." But we also show clips, J.D., from Utah and Tennessee this week. It's not just limited to Florida. First, your reaction to the anger we see at those town halls?</s>VANCE: It reminds me of something a friend of mine said earlier on in the health care debate in 2009, which is once you grant an entitlement to health care, to anything else, it's hard to take it away legislatively. What we're seeing is, despite the fact people have concerns and reservations with Obamacare, fundamentally, it extended health care to a large number of people, and those people don't want to see it go away. And so, the Republican strategy has to be about not just taking the law away, it has to be about how do you reform it successfully. And as they're finding out, it's a lot harder to do when you're the party in power and not just in opposition.</s>CABRERA: Some would say, they've had six years to figure it out. They're been talking about repealing Obamacare all this time.</s>VANCE: It's obviously very hard to repeal a law of that magnitude. And I think one of the issues that Republicans are facing is that they can accomplish a lot of things through what's called the budget reconciliation process that only requires a simple majority in the Senate. But to make significant reforms to the American health care system, you need 60 votes in the Senate. And the simple fact is either they need to bring Democrats along or they need to wait a couple of years until they have more Senators. But their current strategy, I think, reflects something that we saw during the 60 years in opposition, which is it's easier to say no to things and more difficult to come to a consensus about what that replacement should be. I think, as a matter of politics, they may well face some backlash if they're unable to enact a significant form of the health care law, which, like I said, is tough for reasons of strategy in the Senate.</s>CABRERA: J.D., come to me to Utah. We'll play a clip with Utah's Jason Chaffetz. Remember, this is Utah, a predominantly Republican state. I want to talk about this on the backside.</s>CABRERA: You hear them chanting, "Do your job." Chaffetz has said he doesn't buy much into or read much into what they're saying. He believes these protesters at the town hall are perhaps agitators and he thinks they may simply be Democrats upset over Trump's win and Hillary Clinton's loss. Now, as their representative as well, should he be valuing their input?</s>VANCE: Well, he certainly should be. And I don't doubt there's at least some retroactive anger, some folks just upset about the fact they lost the election. But if you think about what Jason Chaffetz is saying there, it's similar to what some said about the Tea Party in 2009, that they're a bunch of people paid by the Koch brothers, they're political agitators. The simple fact is that there's real concerns about how we reform the American health care system. I was not a defender of Obamacare. I felt Obamacare had a lot of issues, but it did solve a very important problem of access. And folks have got to realize that you're not going to be able to take health care away without really upsetting a lot of folks. The answer is not repealing Obamacare and not having a replacement, but actually doing the hard legislative work to come up with something better than Obamacare and reforms Obamacare. And unfortunately, if we get trapped in this debate about whether these folks are just upset about the fact they lost the election, we're going to be missing a lot about policies decisions that need to be made over the next few years.</s>CABRERA: I want to ask you a personal question, because you're moving back to Ohio to start a non-profit to help battle the opioid addiction issue. I know in Louisville, Kentucky, authorities handled more than 40 overdoses in one day recently, Thursday, also 22 in a day in January. So, what's the number-one thing -- because I know this issue is important to you. What do you think can be done to help this crisis?</s>VANCE: Well, I'm going to say there's a couple of things that have to happen. One, there is a health care-access problem, a problem of how you treat people once they're addicted to these really terrible drugs. And unfortunately, we haven't really figured that out in the state of Ohio or anywhere else. It's really hard to treat people who have opioid addictions, but it's something we've got to do and we've got to get better at it. There is an enforcement problem, too. If you look at the biggest drivers, maybe the biggest driver of all of these overdose deaths, it's fentanyl. And it's incredibly -- in some cases, they're like rhinoceros' tranquilizers, incredibly potent opioids, that coming in either through the southern border or through China. Unfortunately, I think no matter how much you treat addiction effectively, if you continue to have people taking drugs meant for rhinoceroses and elephants, you'll have a significant health problem. We have to deal with the fact that these really, really destructive chemical agents are coming into the communities in the first place.</s>CABRERA: In the first place though, people are getting addicted oftentimes prescription drugs coming out of the doctor's office, which leads them to street drugs. J.D. Vance, thank you for your thoughts there. We appreciate it.</s>VANCE: Thank you.</s>CABRERA: Up next, a major player in foreign policy plan, U.S. national security advisor, Michael Flynn, now under fire over revelations he discussed U.S. sanctions with Russia's ambassador. And now there are new details about what he said and when, next. You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.