Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) made the argument that those who might lose their Medicaid coverage due to any Obamacare repeal should be offered an inexpensive option for coverage.
Paul proposed a $1 a day plan and said the existing system and the current proposals were “predicated” on propping up health insurance providers, which he claimed was $15 billion annual industry that benefits from socializing its losses.
“What I would like to do is legalize inexpensive insurance and you should be able to get insurance for $1 a day — I mean, you really should,” Paul said. “The insurance companies make all the money. All of this is predicated upon still, you know, propping up the insurance companies. The insurance companies hate the idea of the buying pools where you can join an association and drive prices down. They absolutely hate it because they think it might eat into their profit. They love sort of privatizing their $15 billion-a-year profit but then socializing their losses in the individual market. I have absolutely no sympathy for the insurance companies to be bailed out by the taxpayer. That $15 billion in profit, that’s where the risk should come from. That’s where the — when we have to absorb risk when people get sick, it should come out of their profit, it shouldn’t come out of the taxpayer’s pocket.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor