Bill Frist was the former Republican Senate Majority Leader.


Bill Frist: Health care law here to stay

In all, the law is 70 percent good and 30 percent bad, Frist reportedly said.
By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 8/25/11 7:56 AM EDT

President Barack Obama’s health care law isn’t going anywhere even if the individual mandate is struck down by the courts, says heart surgeon and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who sees the law’s provisions as mostly good.

“It’s going to survive,” the Tennessee Republican said Wednesday at a health care conference in Sioux Falls, S.D. “It’s not going to be repealed.”

Frist said that although he believes the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate provision should be scrapped, the law still will survive.

“I think the individual mandate is unconstitutional. It’s not the bill I would have written,” Frist said. “But it’s not going to fall.”

The law can work even if the Supreme Court strikes down individual mandate because the rest of its provisions will inject new money into the health care system, Frist said. And law’s execution “will be shaped by these elections,” he said, likely referring to the 2012 presidential election.

In all, the law is 70 percent good and 30 percent bad, Frist said, the Argus Leader reported.

Frist, who at one time was seen as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, told the Argus Leader in an interview that he has no interest in returning to politics.



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