GOP Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said he doesn’t think President Donald Trump should oversell what the Senate GOP’s revised health care bill can accomplish during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”
Paul — who has railed against the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BRCA) since its first draft was released — argued it doesn’t do enough to repeal the Affordable Care Act or bring down premiums in a meaningful way.
“You know, I would caution about overselling what’s going to happen. I’ve been involved with health care for 20 years as a physician,” he told host Christ Wallace. “It was in terrible shape before Obamacare. It got worse under Obamacare. And I predict that the fundamental flaw of Obamacare will remain with the Republican plan. And this is a big reason why I can’t support it.”
The Kentucky Republican has said the revised version of the BCRA is worse than the initial draft since it keeps a large number of the Obamacare taxes in place and provides funds for cost-sharing reduction payments.
“The fundamental flaw is that mandates on insurance cause prices to rise and young, healthy people then say, hey, I’ll just wait until I get sick and the insurance pool gets sicker and sicker. It’s called adverse selection. We also call it the death spiral. The Republican plan admits that it will continue. If they just say, hey, guys, we’re going to subsidize it,” Rand said.
While proponents argue funding CSRs is necessary to stabilize the insurance markets during the course of the transition period, Paul argues insurance companies are profitable and don’t need federal dollars.
“If they just say, hey, guys, we’re going to subsidize it. We’re going to dump billions of dollars into the insurance companies and say, please charge less and try to counteract the death spiral,” he said. “But the Republican plan doesn’t fix the death spiral of ObamaCare, it simply subsidizes it.”
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