The Republicans in the Senate finally revealed their so-called health care bill and it could mean a death sentence for millions of Americans. But Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) used a Fox News appearance to pressure his party to make it even harsher.
Paul seemed to think that no medical help should be given to anyone. He whined, “Not only are we keeping [Obamacare subsidies], we may actually be providing more subsidies than Obamacare has. Our early estimates on the bill are that the bill may spend more in the next year or two than Obamacare does.”
Never mind that the Senate bill helps fewer people than Obamacare and is a massive cut to Medicaid in the long term. Paul thinks we should all think of health care as a commodity. If you can’t afford it, well, too bad.
“I don’t understand why the taxpayer would need to subsidize insurance companies, and I’m just not for that,” he said about the current bill. But he didn’t offer a single alternative to helping people get needed health care other than the generally useless measure of allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines, health savings account expansion (not very helpful if you don’t have enough money to cover a very expensive illness) and difficult-to-establish co-ops.
“I want a bill that looks like, feels like and is a repeal bill,” Paul said.
Host Neil Cavuto asked, “Should Republicans go back to their original position which was this is not the government’s job period?”
“That’s my position,” Paul agreed.
But don’t get excited thinking that Paul will actually vote against the Senate bill and perhaps block its passage. He made it clear he wants to negotiate. He said pointedly that passage “could still happen” by July 4th “if the people who wrote the bill are willing to negotiate.”
And while those of us who rely on Obamacare or Medicaid for health insurance fear what this bill will do to our health and even our very existence, Paul is worried that it won’t deprive enough people of health insurance. “My fear is, when I look at this, I keep reading it and it’s like, it sounds like Obamacare to me!” he complained.
“In some areas, it may be Obamacare plus, on the subsidy side. We can’t have a bill that spends more than Obamacare in the first couple years and call that a repeal bill.”
In other words, Paul would rather see his constituents go without health insurance than spend more money on subsidies for a few years.
Paul’s “solution?” “We should have sufficient confidence in capitalism, competition, and free markets.” He also thinks people should have enough “confidence” that “people can buy their insurance through an association.”
And what are Americans supposed to do while that alternative “association” is being set up? Apparently, we just need more confidence in the free market and stop expecting any kind of human decency from the likes of him.
Watch Paul’s utter lack of concern for Americans’ health and well being below, from the June 22, 2017 Your World.
Neither are medical services like selling apples. I hear idiots on Fox News treating medical services as a commodity like a hospital is going to run a 2 for the price of 1 special on heart bypass surgery.
Combine the two and it gets very complicated indeed. Insurance companies have the buying power to negotiate huge rate discounts and the expertise to know what they’re buying. Not so much for you and I fending for ourselves.
As I always say, the GOP has turned into the party of Social Darwinism. Disgusting!
We need to remember that the purpose of these bills in the House and Senate has never been to help anyone receive healthcare or health insurance. The Right Wing very much agrees with Rand Paul on this – it’s your problem to take care of your hospital bills, not theirs. As far as they’re concerned, Cavuto’s little question is exactly their position – that there never should have been any program like this in the first place. And by the way, keep in mind that Rand Paul was already arguing to go for just the repeal first and then maybe see about what a replacement might look like, someday. When he discussed this three months ago, he wanted it to sound like he really was interested in a replacement while many of us knew he was lying through his teeth. What he just said in this interview confirms that he was lying in the earlier interviews. He has no intention of allowing ANY replacement through.
The purpose of these bills was always to simply erase the one legislative achievement of the Barack Obama presidency so that he could retroactively be declared a total failure, and so that they could punish the voters who’d had the temerity to support him. Apparently, the Right Wing got a little greedy here – they figured they could not only destroy the ACA but could get themselves a quick windfall at the same time. They just didn’t count on their own members’ conflicting agendas cancelling their work out. Some of the members are more bent on the revenge/punishment idea (like Paul) and others are more bent on getting a financial bonus as well.
It sounds from what we’re seeing today that the GOP will very likely not be able to get this bill through the Senate, as they’ll lose enough votes either way to stymie it.
Based on their conduct over the past seven months, I expect them to then simply go for repeal, as they all agree on that, which will allow them to at least try to declare some kind of a legislative achievement and victory. If it’s just repeal they’re after, they should be able to ram that directly through both Houses in record time and get it to Pence’s desk as we thought they would have done six months ago. If they have to fall back to this, as looks likely, I expect Trump to then blame the Dems for somehow not going along with this behavior, and if his poll numbers continue plummeting, we’ll likely start to hear more rumblings about indicting the Clintons as quickly as possible.
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