WASHINGTON With the coronavirus spreading across the globe, U.S. politicians seem to be rethinking some of their most dearly held beliefs about socialized medicine .

A Department of Health and Human Services official told a Senate committee Tuesday that the administration is considering how it could pay hospitals to treat uninsured coronavirus, or COVID-19, patients. And Republicans in Congress some of whom have spent their entire political careers railing against Obamacare and socialized medicine are sounding supportive of the idea.

You can look at it as socialized medicine, Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) told HuffPost on Tuesday. But in the face of an outbreak, a pandemic, whats your options?

Yoho, one of the most anti-Obamacare lawmakers in Congress, said it would be a wise thing for the government to pay for testing and treatment of the uninsured, while also saying hes not OK with socialized medicine.

Sometimes you have to do things that you have to do for your country, but as far as socialized medicine, no, Yoho said. Does this fall into that? Yeah, I guess you could throw it in there, but hopefully its not the long-term.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said he hadnt heard about the administration possibly covering coronavirus hospital costs, but he didnt exactly sound opposed.

I think a pandemic is a distinct issue from the overall health care proposals that have been on the table for a while, Johnson said. We have to put politics aside and address the problem.

And another Republican, Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), also told HuffPost he would support extraordinary measures to stop the spread of the virus. I mean, this is a crisis right now, so we got to respond in any way thats going to fix the problem, he said.

Fitzpatrick also agreed that the coronavirus was challenging some of the arguments for our current health care system. No doubt about it, Fitzpatrick said.

The Trump administration official who testified Tuesday Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS said the government could treat coronavirus victims as federal disaster patients, and therefore pay hospitals for their care at an above-Medicare rate.

We are in conversations initial conversations with [the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] to understand if that could be utilized in this way, Kadlec said.