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This piece has been updated to include comment from Toomey spokeswoman E.R. Anderson.

Progressive Facebook lost its mind a little bit on Tuesday over an exchange between U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and U.S. Rep. Tom Price, who's President Donald Trump's nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

But a careful reading of Toomey's remarks reveals there was more smoke than fire to those complaints.

The appearance before the Senate Finance Committee, of which Toomey is a member, was Price's second appearance before a U.S. Senate panel.

Trump has been pushing lawmakers to come up with a replacement for Obamacare, which Republicans began repealing last week. As PBS NewsHour reports, Trump issued an executive order empowering agencies to begin "[curbing] the fiscal burdens the law imposes."

Speaking to Price, R-Ga., Toomey says:

"Now one way to force it [coverage] is to force insurance companies to provide health insurance coverage to someone as soon as they show up, regardless of what condition they have, which is kind of like asking the property/casualty company to rebuild the house after it's burned down."

The clip, created by someone viewing it on the C-Span website, is actually only a portion of Toomey's query to Price.

His full remarks, captured by closed-captioning, are:

"Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Price, thank you for joining us. Thanks for the great work you have done in the House and willingness to serve in this extremely important post.

"I enjoyed the conversation we had a little while back. I think it bears reminding everyone as we talk about Obamacare that certainly the individual market is in a class one debt spiral, the adverse selection is destroying that market.

"It is in free-fall in Pennsylvania. Forty-three percent of all Pennsylvanians have a grand total of one choice [of insurer]. That does not include what they were promised before, which of course, was never true.

"So we have a system in collapse .. and figure out what's a better way to go forward. When we talk about reform, sometimes I hear people say we have to keep coverage of pre-existing conditions because, we've got to keep that.

"And when I hear that, I think that we're missing something here and here is what I'm getting at. There's obviously a number of Americans who suffer from chronic expensive healthcare needs. They have had these conditions sometimes all their lives, sometimes for some other period of time. And for many of them, the proper care for those conditions is unaffordable.

"I think we agree that we want to make sure those people get the health care they need. Now one way to force it [coverage] is to force insurance companies to provide health insurance coverage to someone as soon as they show up, regardless of what condition they have, which is kind of like asking the property/casualty company to rebuild the house after it's burned down. But that's only one way to deal with it.

"Am I correct that it is your view there are other, perhaps more effective, ways since, after all Obamacare is in collapse, to make sure these people with pre-existing conditions get an affordable health care price without having a mandate?"

The social media frenzy Tuesday did capture the most seemingly inflammatory portions of Toomey's remarks, which came in the midst of a mostly anodyne recitation of familiar Republican grievances lodged against the individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act.

Toomey's spokeswoman, E.R. Anderson, amplified her boss's remarks:

"Senator Toomey was making an analogy about how insurance markets work, and why Obamacare is in the midst of a "death spiral," where prices for insurance continue to rise, and healthier, wealthier and younger Americans are finding it more appealing to go without insurance," she said in an emailed request for comment.

Toomey's point is "there are multiple ways to help people with very expensive, chronic illnesses aside from mandating all Americans buy high-cost insurance and requiring all insurers to sell products to anyone - even after a person has been diagnosed or entered treatment for an illness. Other approaches to help those with costly chronic conditions include the use of state-based high-risk pools as well as extending the incentives for individuals to maintain credible coverage, which currently exist in the employer-sponsored market, to the individual market," she said.

Even so, denizens of Facebook and Twitter urged others to call Toomey's office to complain:

And on Tuesday, protesters gathered outside of some of Toomey's Pennsylvania offices, including his hometown of Allentown:

More than 100 protesters at @PatToomey office in Allentown pic.twitter.com/vlkUqroLSS — skraus (@skraus) January 24, 2017

Also on Tuesday, Toomey announced he plans to vote in favor of former Exxon/Mobil executive Rex Tillerson, who's Trump's pick to run the State Department.

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