Sen. Rand Paul says lawmakers shouldn't "over-promise" to fix health care
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, says lawmakers shouldn't "over-promise" on fixing America's health care system, saying it was "broken" before the Affordable Care Act and will still will be broken if the Senate passes the latest GOP health bill.
"It was broken before Obamacare, I don't think Obamacare fixed it, but it's still going to be broken after this Republican bill, mainly because there's not a marketplace, the consumer doesn't make decisions based on price. Until you connect the consumer to price, until you have real competition and capitalism, the marketplace will be broken," said Paul said on "CBS This Morning" Wednesday.
Paul said the current bill "placates moderates" by keeping parts of Obamacare, including Medicaid expansion and tax subsidies, but creates issues for those who ran on campaign promises to deliver a repeal of the health law.
Hours after the bill's text was released last Thursday, Paul released a joint statement with Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, arguing that the bill didn't go far enough in delivering a total repeal of Obamacare.
Paul acknowledged on Wednesday that the costs of health care are a major sticking point for his lack of support, pointing out the costly impacts of keeping Medicaid expansion while cutting taxes.
"We have people squawking we're not keeping enough Medicaid expansion when in fact we keep the Medicaid expansion for seven years. We let the expansion states to continue to expand, and it never has really been an honest accounting of Medicaid," said Paul.
He added, "Our government, if you look at our budget, we're $500 billion in the hole, we spend more than $500 billion than comes in. They play games with the baseline — 'Oh, this is saving money.' Nobody believes this is saving money."
Paul suggested that once Republicans add additional repeal provisions to the bill — a bill he said will "still never be completely fixed" — they should sit down with Senate Democrats in a bipartisan fashion. He believes they could find common ground on ideas like voluntary buying groups to help bring down prices.
Paul's comments come just one day after Republican leaders announced they would be delaying the vote on their health care plan following a struggle to convince a majority of their own members to back the bill.
The Senate now plans to take up the vote sometime after the July 4th recess.
Paul met with President Trump Tuesday afternoon just before Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the decision to delay the vote. Paul said Mr. Trump appeared sympathetic to the argument and that he wants to get the bill through to repeal Obamacare.
"I tried to make sure that he understood that many of us don't think that the current bill is repeal," Paul said. "We voted 60 times to repeal it, all of it, or as much as we thought we could repeal, and here we are now, actually keeping quite a bit of it."
