CNN "State of the Union" interviews during 2015: on Health Care

Carly Fiorina: Pre-existing conditions is good goal but ObamaCare will fail

A: That's right.

Q: I should point out that you are a survivor of breast cancer; didn't your experience show you that the preexisting condition part of ObamaCare is crucial?

A: I absolutely endorse that goal. But guess what? None of that has worked. Demonstrably, if you look at the results of ObamaCare, what you see is emergency room visits are up over 50%. Health insurance premiums are up almost 40% now. We're dumping more and more people into Medicaid. Medicaid is a program that fewer and fewer doctors will accept patients from. That isn't helping anyone with cancer, I can assure you. The problem is this.

Q: But the expansion of the pool allows the insurance companies to pay for the people with preexisting conditions.

A: The health insurance companies and the drug companies who helped write ObamaCare are consolidating. That's called crony capitalism. Meanwhile, people are getting left on the sidelines.

Carly Fiorina: Companies should offer maternity leave, but not mandated

A: When I was the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, we also offered paid maternity leave and paternity leave. I don't think it's the role of government to dictate to the private sector how to manage their businesses, especially when it's pretty clear that the private sector, like Netflix, is doing the right thing because they know it helps them attract the right talent.

Donald Trump: We didn't have a free market before ObamaCare

A: You know, I looked at that. I looked at it very seriously. Some people don't agree with me on this: I want everyone to have coverage. I love the free market, but we never had a free market. Even before ObamaCare, it wasn't really free market. As an example, in New York, when I wanted to bid out my health insurance, we had boundaries. I could only go in New York. If I wanted to bid it out to a company from California or New Jersey, anywhere--you get no bids.

Q: But the single payer, you're not interested anymore?

A: No. No, these are different times. And over the years, you are going to change your attitudes. You're going to learn things and you're going to change. And I have evolved on that issue. I have evolved on numerous issues.