Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday he still opposes his party's healthcare reform plan, because even with changes to some of its spending measures, it still does not repeal Obamacare and its provisions.
"It keeps about half of the Obamacare taxes," the Kentucky Republican told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. "It keeps most of the Obamacare regulations. It keeps most of the Obamacare subsidies and it creates a giant insurance bailout super fund, and I just can't vote for a bill that creates a $200 billion fund to bail out insurance companies."
Changes to the Senate Republicans' bill will officially be rolled out on Thursday. According to the Washington Examiner, which has received a Senate leadership outline of the plan, the revised Better Care Reconciliation Act, will provide an extra $70 billion for states to use toward helping residents establish health savings accounts, reducing premiums, or undertaking other initiatives for reducing costs. Initially, the bill's first draft allowed $112 billion for those items.
The changes also include $45 billion to fund treatment for people with opioid addictions.
While some have touted the Senate bill as being better than Obamacare, Paul said he doesn't think that's the case, as the "fundamental flaw," remains that people don't have to buy insurance before they get sick.
"We have these regulations that make it really expensive for young, healthy people," said Paul. "All of that remains and so the Republicans don't fix the death spiral of Obamacare, they subsidize it."
In addition, the bill contains a $200 billion insurance bailout fund, "to subsidize the death spiral," but that won't fix it, said Paul.
"To my mind, it's a bailout of the insurance companies," he said. "The insurance companies make $15 billion a year. They have got their hands all over this bill. They have written everything in the bill to benefit insurance companies. What kind of business is it to be in a business where everybody has to buy insurance and then it is subsidized?
Something can be offered that is better than Obamacare, which has left 27 million people behind without insurance, said Paul.
"I offer insurance to all of them," he said. "Let every individual in this country, plumbers, let them join together so they can get group insurance at a cheaper price. You have to believe in freedom and leaving people alone will bring the market prices down."
Paul said, though, that there can still be a "conservative, clean repeal" of Obamacare.
"I think if this bill fails, I think there is still a chance it will fail, our backup plan should be to divide the bills in two," said Paul. "Have a clean repeal [that] we promised the American people."
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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