Sen. Rand Paul, one of four GOP senators who said Thursday they are not yet ready to vote for proposed healthcare reform legislation, commented Friday that he wants the Senate bill to look more like it will repeal Obamacare.
"I didn't promise people I was going to replace it with a federal program or by bailing out insurance companies," the Kentucky Republican told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program.
On Thursday, Paul, along with Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Mike Lee of Utah, said in a statement that they are open to negotiations, but as the bill stands now, they don't believe it repeals Obamacare.
Paul said Friday morning the GOP proposal retains many of Obamacare's flaws, including allowing people to buy insurance after they are sick.
"We also added regulations to insurance that increased the price of insurance, such that healthy people didn't want to buy it because it was too expensive," said Paul.
"Those fundamental flaws still remain. The Republican proposal is okay, can you still buy insurance after you are sick, which led to the death spiral, led to the elevated premiums, but we're to subsidize premiums by dumping a bunch of money into the insurance companies."
Insurance companies already make "15 billion" a year, Paul continued, and he does not think taxpayers should give them more money.
"I really am opposed to the idea of giving insurance companies money and saying, 'will you lower your prices?'" said Pau."I mean, we can do this for cars, few cars are expensive. We can have a new car stabilization fund."
Healthcare is "extraordinarily expensive" as it is, said Paul, and more money per patient is spent in the United States now than in any other country.
"We don't get the results and, in large part, we don't get the results because the free market is kept outside the door of every hospital, of every doctor's office, of every testing facility," said Paul.
Part of the problem, said Paul, is that capitalism does not work in healthcare, as the consumer is disconnected from the product, except for a few exceptions.
"Lasik surgery, when you want to get surgery to get rid of glasses, everybody asks a price," said Paul, an ophthalmologist. "The average consumer calls four different doctors. It's a sophisticated million-dollar laser. Yet the price has gone down by three-quarters over 15 years."
However, that's not done in healthcare, most of which has fixed prices.
Even with private insurance, no consumers shop for price, said Paul.
"There's a little bit of competition in what prices come forward, but not really with the consumer involved," said Paul.
Paul noted that lawmakers are already mandated by law to have Obamacare policies, and his guess is the new legislation will be binding as well, but he does not want that, as he'd rather be allowed to choose inexpensive insurance.
"In fact, one of the big replacement ideas I had was to legalize inexpensive insurance," said Paul. "To get inexpensive insurance you have to repeal the regulations. There's 12 regulations in Obamacare.
"We're repealing two of them. We might be able to whittle the price down a little bit. I don't think prices will come down at all."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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