Transcript:
Scott: “You know, there’s been some talk out there about delaying it. Where do you see that sitting right now?”
Baucus: “I think that’d be premature. I just don’t think that makes sense right now. I think it’d be better to go ‘Okay, let’s make what we have work, make it work better.’ We may get to a point later where maybe a delay is more appropriate, that might be the better judgment, but I don’t think we’re at that point yet. Let’s just keep working with what we got.”
Scott: “Do you think, you know, there are going to be some penalties enacted if people don’t have insurance, do you think those penalties should be waived for this next year due to things not going right?”
Baucus: “Well, the President has already delayed the penalty dates. It was going to be the first of the year, now it’s going to be delayed to March 31st. I think it makes better sense, let’s just see how much we can put together, how much Humpty-Dumpty can be fixed in the next month, and then if it looks like Humpty Dumpty’s not getting good and back together, maybe we should think about penalties. It’s not right to penalize people for mistakes that the government’s made because the exchange isn’t working. Let’s take this approach and make sure the exchange is working, so we don’t have to worry about a penalty problem.”
The full audio can be found here.