As the Trump administration prepares to follow through on the president's campaign trail pledge to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, it's receiving advice from one of Obamacare's earliest and sharpest critics: Florida Gov. Rick Scott.

  • Scott meeting regularly with Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Tom Price
  • Scott: "[Obamacare] has to be repealed."
  • Price has suggested some parts should be salvaged

Scott, a former hospital executive who ran for office in 2010 on the back of his Conservatives for Patients Rights anti-Obamacare advocacy campaign, has been meeting regularly with Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Tom Price.

The two men share a deep disdain for former President Barack Obama's signature accomplishment, and are discussing the logistics of repealing it.

Scott also took part in a Thursday U.S. Senate forum on legislative options for repeal.

"There's a lot of people in Washington that say it's not fashionable to say that it's going to be repealed," Scott told state capitol reporters in Tallahassee. "It has to be repealed."

"We can't...think about what we're doing to ourselves," Scott continued. "We cannot pay for this. It's too...there's no way that Americans are going to be able to get health care if we continue the path we're going down."

In recent days, however, Trump has appeared to walk back his pledges to eviscerate Obamacare. In an interview with the Washington Post, he said his administration's plan would guarantee "insurance for everybody," a nod to the difficulty of ending coverage for the roughly 20 million previously uninsured Americans who gained health care through the Affordable Care Act.

"The plan will be repeal and replace Obamacare," Trump said at a press conference this week. "We're going to have a health care that is far less expensive and far better."

Price, too, has suggested that parts Obamacare should be allowed to remain intact. In particular, he pointed to the program's requirement that insurers allow adult children to remain on their parents' family plan through age 26.

"I think it's been baked into the insurance programs," Price testified at his Senate confirmation hearing.

The comments are proving unsettling to many conservatives who believe the entirety of the Affordable Care Act should be scrapped, even if it means leaving millions of Americans uninsured.

The administration has yet to detail its plan to "replace" the act, but Scott will almost certainly play a role in convincing White House officials to take a hard line.

"If you look at health care, what you've got to do is you've got to create more competition," said Scott. "You've got to allow people to buy insurance that fits their needs. We know what our needs are. And then, you've got to make sure that people can get a job. If you want to get good health care, the best way to get it is get a job."