Tom Price lies through his teeth AND is brazenly honest in the same day!

Yesterday, HHS Secretary Tom Price lied his ass off on the Sunday morning talk shows:

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on Sunday made a bold and questionable prediction about the Senate GOP bill to repeal and replace Obamacare: He argued that the legislation could actually provide health insurance to more individuals than the Affordable Care Act, a claim undermined by the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the bill.

Price made the comment while discussing how the Senate bill closes a gap that existed in certain states that chose not to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. In those states, there is a section of the population that does not qualify for traditional Medicaid, but makes too little to qualify for subsidies on the exchanges since Obamacare intended to cover it through Medicaid expansion. The Senate bill closes this gap, and Price used that provision to argue that more people would be covered under the new legislation.

...Price’s comments about the CBO’s methodology appear to be misleading, however. In a December blog post, the CBO said that it counts “catastrophic plans as private insurance coverage because they typically provide major medical coverage and are permitted under the ACA in limited circumstances.”

Price is actually lying in two different ways here:

• First, he's trying to claim that because the 2.6 million people caught in the Medicaid Gap (which only exists because Republicans refused to expand Medicaid) earning less than $12,000/year would be eligible for 58% AV policies with $6,000+ deductibles, that somehow means the GOP should get credit for providing mostly useless catastrophic healthcare policies to them.

• Secondly, Price has also constantly tried to argue that the ~15 million people enrolled in Medicaid via ACA expansion "don't count" as being "covered by Obamacare" because Medicaid "doesn't count" for some unknown reason. Therefore, shifting millions of people from 97% AV Medicaid over to 58% AV catastrophic plans is apparently supposed to "count" as "more people" being covered, which is ludicrous.

However, on the same day, Price was jaw-droppingly honest and frank about what he wants the end result of the GOP's healthcare repeal effort to be:

Yes, that's right: Price actually said that he thinks insurance companies should simply "dust off how they did business before Obamacare" and everything will be awesome.

He said this out loud. Willingly. On camera. Where he was being recorded and stuff.