Sen. Rand Paul: I Talked to President Trump Last Night; He’s ‘Very Open to Negotiation’ on Obamacare Repeal

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), an outspoken critic of the House Republican replacement for Obamacare, joined SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Friday’s Breitbart News Daily. Paul revealed he has been in constant contact with President Donald Trump about the issue, including a phone call Thursday night, and said the president is “very open to negotiation.”

Kassam asked if House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) was correct to argue that repealing Obamacare without an immediate comprehensive replacement plan is impossible, and the plan his caucus has put on the table is the closest to repeal they can get.

“I’ve always been for repeal and replace at the same time, but not necessarily in the same bill,” Senator Paul replied. “The reason why I think you need ‘replace’ is we need to offer hope, and we need to offer an insurance product that is inexpensive, and something that will fix the marketplace so everybody can get access to health insurance.”

“The problem with putting replace and repeal in one bill is that we all tend to agree on the repeal aspect, Republicans, but we tend to disagree on the replacement aspect,” he said. “My idea of replacement is trying to let the marketplace work, encouraging people to join co-ops and healthcare associations so they can drive prices down, and freeing-up the sale of all kinds of insurance.”

“Some of those things we actually agree with Paul Ryan on. The problem is Paul Ryan has a lot of Obamacare Lite stuff that he wants to keep in there,” Paul said. “He wants to keep the Obamacare subsidies. He calls them tax credits, refundable tax credits. He wants to keep the Obamacare taxes, all of the taxes, for a year – and then he wants to keep the Cadillac tax, the tax on good insurance, forever.”

“He also has an individual mandate in there, which is curious, because if you’ve listened to the debate for the last six, seven years, one of the things Republicans have hated the worst is the individual mandate,” Paul added. “He keeps the individual mandate. You just don’t pay the government; you have to pay the insurance company. I think if you talk to customers and patients across the country and talk to doctors, there’s not a great deal of difference in dislike between the government and the insurance companies. You’re not going to make a lot of us happy if we have to pay the insurance company a penalty instead of the government.”

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