"You can figure out a way to change the state that you live in," Mick Mulvaney says. | Getty Mulvaney: Americans upset with changes to essential services should help 'change the state that you live in'

Americans upset that the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare would cut requirements for so-called essential services like maternity care and addiction treatment should “figure out a way to change the state that you live in” if the bill ends up becoming law, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Friday morning.

Amid last-minute negotiations to win support in the House from the conservative Freedom Caucus, White House officials and GOP leadership offered to cut from the bill federal mandates that health insurance plans cover essential health benefits, a category that also includes pediatric care and mental health services. Mulvaney, himself a former Freedom Caucus member, said Friday morning that the repeal-and-replace measure would leave it to states to decide what requirements to place on health insurance plans.


“States not only have the ability to require those services, many of them already do,” Mulvaney said. “What we're doing is taking away the federal controls of these systems. If you live in a state that wants to mandate maternity coverage for everybody, including 60-year-old women, that's fine. If there’s a state that wants to do it different, you can do that as well.”

“What if you live in a state that doesn't do that?” “CBS This Morning” anchor Alex Wagner asked Mulvaney, to which he replied, “Then you can figure out a way to change the state that you live in.”

Asked whether that meant that Americans should be prepared to move in order to find a state with health care protections that meet their needs, Mulvaney said no.

“They could try to change their own state legislatures and their state laws. Why do we look to the federal government to try and fix our local problems?” he said. “That's one of the big problems with Obamacare. It took that one-size-fits-all and crammed it down on the entire country. As a result, you have a system where everybody, just about, can afford to have insurance but nobody can actually afford to go to the doctor and that's what we're trying to fix.”