Speaker 1: Billy cunning in the Great America. Welcome the schools, the
Speaker 1: effort in the tri State. As you know, Kyle Slover
Speaker 1: has signed a long term deal with the Philadelphia Phillies
Speaker 1: who stay there, and so that's not a good sign.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless, the weather is going to get rather hippy
Speaker 1: the next few days. But until then, Senator Ran Paul
Speaker 1: is the junior Senator from the Great State of Kentucky.
Speaker 1: I look for today he'll be the senior Senator from
Speaker 1: the Great State of Kentucky. And of course he's intimately
Speaker 1: involved in the healthcare crisis in the country that we
Speaker 1: have in which many Americans are concerned about ever increasing
Speaker 1: premium bills because of Obamacare. There's only about eight percent
Speaker 1: of Americans are on the Obamacare Exchange. Is the great
Speaker 1: majority to get their healthcare through an employer. And nonetheless
Speaker 1: joining us now is the Great Senator Ran Paul, the
Speaker 1: Great State of Ohio and Senator about several weeks ago,
Speaker 1: when the Democrats shut down the Congress for forty four days,
Speaker 1: you and the Senate agreed to have a vote on
Speaker 1: Obamacare subsidies continuance sometime in the middle of December. It's
Speaker 1: getting pretty close and so how's the status of those
Speaker 1: negotiations to have a vote. Of course, when I speak
Speaker 1: to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to Mike Johnson,
Speaker 1: he tells me there's no way it's going to pass
Speaker 1: in the House. But that wasn't the original agreement. So
Speaker 1: as we sit here, how does it look to have
Speaker 1: a vote in the Senate? And if so, how will
Speaker 1: you vote?
Speaker 2: Think the vote's going to happen on Thursday of this week.
Speaker 2: I will vote against extending the Obamacare subsidies. I think
Speaker 2: you have to look at the facts, and the facts
Speaker 2: are that they've been an abysmal failure. They keep providing
Speaker 2: higher and higher subsidies, many of which go to rich people,
Speaker 2: go to people making up to four hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a year. And I don't know any Kentucky and who
Speaker 2: comes up to me and says, oh, yeah, four hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a years poor and you should really get
Speaker 2: subsidies from the government. But as the government has subsidized insurance,
Speaker 2: the premiums have just gotten hired and hire so big.
Speaker 2: Insurance is made off like a bandit on these things,
Speaker 2: and it isn't really making insurance more affordable. So I
Speaker 2: have a competing plan. My plan is called association health plans,
Speaker 2: and it would let people join a group like either
Speaker 2: Costco or Sam's Club or Amazon, and then you would
Speaker 2: buy your insurance as a group. So instead of being
Speaker 2: in the individual market, you now have group insurance like
Speaker 2: somebody who works for General Motors or Toyota or a
Speaker 2: big company. But as you join this big group, the
Speaker 2: big group would have leverage to bid prices down. Costco
Speaker 2: has got forty four million members, so if one person
Speaker 2: negotiated for forty four million members, you'd have a meeting
Speaker 2: with the CEO of the major big insurance companies and
Speaker 2: you'd build a demand that prices are lower. And so
Speaker 2: if we did that, I think we could transform the
Speaker 2: marketplace and get more, less expensive insurance for everyone.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, from my perspective, that makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense. If you take Amazon and Costco and a
Speaker 1: bunch of others, obviously you'll be close to one hundred
Speaker 1: million people would have accessed The great majority of people
Speaker 1: have Medicare, Medicaid and or employer sponsored healthcare. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a small number, but an important constituency. And so
Speaker 1: I don't think the Democrats would like that, though, Senator,
Speaker 1: because right now the Obamacare subsidies largely go to insurance
Speaker 1: companies who promise to hold down premiums and deductibilities, which
Speaker 1: they don't do, and so right now and then the
Speaker 1: insurance companies kick money back to the Democrats called campaign donations.
Speaker 1: When this great idea to let the marketplace work to
Speaker 1: hold down cost is advanced by people like you, this
Speaker 1: out of a snowballs chance in hell a getting passed
Speaker 1: by the Democrats.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of support on the Republican side. You know.
Speaker 2: I've talked to President Trump about this in his first administration.
Speaker 2: I got him to sign an executive order to put
Speaker 2: this into place. But the Democrats sue. The Democrats State
Speaker 2: Attorney General sued and kind of steining it in court.
Speaker 2: But I don't know why. I talk to Democrats all
Speaker 2: the time about it. It's basically letting the consumer bargain collectively.
Speaker 2: You would think Democrats would be for that, but as
Speaker 2: we get into the nitty gritty, Democrats will say, well,
Speaker 2: people are too stupid, you know, public they can't let
Speaker 2: them make choices and what kind of insurance they want,
Speaker 2: So we have to dictate what goes into each insurance policy. Well,
Speaker 2: once you start doing that, you raise the price. So,
Speaker 2: for example, if you're a sixty year old woman, you've
Speaker 2: had your children and you're not planning out having any
Speaker 2: more children, shouldn't you be allowed to buy insurance that
Speaker 2: doesn't have pregnancy coverage. Well, if you allow that, then
Speaker 2: you allow some options. They're going to be less expensive.
Speaker 2: Let's say you're twenty five years old, but you're responsible
Speaker 2: and you're not ready to have kids. You'd like for
Speaker 2: the next three years to buy insurance without pregnancy coverage.
Speaker 2: Shouldn't you be allowed to? You know, because a young
Speaker 2: single person might want to save money until they're married,
Speaker 2: and then when they're married they might want to have
Speaker 2: something as pregnancy coverage. But you also might join cost
Speaker 2: co and if there were forty four million members, you
Speaker 2: might get pregnancy coverage thrown in for free because they've
Speaker 2: negotiated that with the insurance company because the group is
Speaker 2: so huge. But it is hard get democrats. I haven't
Speaker 2: gotten any Democrat on board. They perk up and they
Speaker 2: listen and they say, well maybe, but then when you
Speaker 2: get to the nitty gritty, they say, well, we have
Speaker 2: to regulate what people buy because people aren't smart enough
Speaker 2: to make these decisions. And it's really this disdain for
Speaker 2: the intelligence of the American public from the left, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, they don't state it outright. That's essentially what
Speaker 2: they're saying is that the American public is not smart
Speaker 2: enough to buy the insurance that they need.
Speaker 1: If I want to go through the Obamacare exchanges, I
Speaker 1: doubt you and I would ever need abortion services. I
Speaker 1: doubt we're going to ever need that. But part of
Speaker 1: our premium pays for that. And that is can you
Speaker 1: go back in time is tell us why Obamacare, which
Speaker 1: promised like your doctor, keep your doctor, like your plan,
Speaker 1: keep your plan, my plan, Obama said, is going to
Speaker 1: reduce premiums by twenty five hundred dollars a month, and
Speaker 1: that that's going to be a great benefit.
Speaker 3: It's going to reduce the deficit.
Speaker 1: And if the deficit is that reduced, it's going to
Speaker 1: trigger automatical any reductions in Obama. The whole thing was
Speaker 1: built upon a how cards and it's failed. And can
Speaker 1: you get me from the senatorial perspective, you're one of
Speaker 1: the power brokers in Washington as to why Obamacare failed
Speaker 1: so miserably and the media will not report on that.
Speaker 2: It was all predicated upon a lie. It was all
Speaker 2: predicated upon a government program that was never going to work,
Speaker 2: and it was past simply with Democrat votes. You know,
Speaker 2: no Republicans voted to start it. And so what we
Speaker 2: wound up with was a government directed plan wasn't based
Speaker 2: on the market, wasn't based on market forces, and it
Speaker 2: had all kinds of mandates within it as to what
Speaker 2: kind of insurance you would buy, when you paid, when
Speaker 2: you didn't pay, And in the end it's been a
Speaker 2: cossal failure. Premiums didn't go down, premiums went up. And
Speaker 2: in fact, you have the worst of all worlds. You
Speaker 2: have high deductibles an high premiums. They used to be
Speaker 2: the marketplace would offer you high deductible plans for lower premiums.
Speaker 2: But now you have, you know, like I say, the
Speaker 2: worst of all worlds. You have high deductible plans and
Speaker 2: high premiums. And you'll you'll hear examples of somebody making
Speaker 2: eighty thousand dollars a year there's a thirty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: insurance policy. Well that's just obscene. So we have to
Speaker 2: do something different. We can do the same thing. If
Speaker 2: you know, just extending Obamacare we're going to work. We
Speaker 2: could debate that, but it hasn't worked. It's objectively failed.
Speaker 2: So we need to do something different, and it works
Speaker 2: everywhere else. Look, television sets are ninety nine percent cheaper
Speaker 2: than they were forty years ago. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: as iPhones, everything, all the technology. We have amazing things
Speaker 2: at our fingertips, and the price has been going down
Speaker 2: every year. So we need to bring a real marketplace.
Speaker 2: Let capitalism work in healthcare help. There's one of the
Speaker 2: few areas where prices go up dramatically greater than any
Speaker 2: other segment of the economy.
Speaker 1: It's about one six of the entire economy, and so
Speaker 1: it's almost impossible to have inflation affected in a positive
Speaker 1: way if one sixth of the economy have ten percent
Speaker 1: increases every year and people are unhappy with it. You
Speaker 1: can imagine if I have car insurance and you I
Speaker 1: assume you have car insurance. Imagine if my car insurance
Speaker 1: policy would cover oil changes, it would cover cleaning out
Speaker 1: my car, it would cover rotating the tires. My insurance policy,
Speaker 1: my car insurance would be through the roof. Why not
Speaker 1: have a catastrophic plan, so that if I have an
Speaker 1: accident or hurt somebody, then it's covered, but all the
Speaker 1: other expenses are borne by the consumer.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't that be a good plan for medical insurance?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you combine a catastrophic plan for a young,
Speaker 2: healthy person with a health savings account. And so currently
Speaker 2: only ten percent of insurance plans are legally allowed to
Speaker 2: all for health savings accounts. So my plan would do
Speaker 2: the association health careing co ops or buying groups, but
Speaker 2: also would allow everybody to get health savings account. So
Speaker 2: I've had three kids that I had to put in braces,
Speaker 2: but I did it with pre tax money that I
Speaker 2: put in my HSA, so I was able to save
Speaker 2: on their prices. But why shouldn't every other American get
Speaker 2: say thing that I was able to get. You know,
Speaker 2: it's ridiculous that ninety percent of insurance plans in our
Speaker 2: country don't allow health savings accounts. So my plan will
Speaker 2: let everybody have a health savings account. It would let
Speaker 2: you pay your premiums out of your health savings account.
Speaker 2: It would let you do more things like diet programs
Speaker 2: and gymnasium out of your health savings account, vitamins out
Speaker 2: of your health savings account. So the idea of wellness
Speaker 2: that you know Bobby Kennedy's talking about, we would let
Speaker 2: it go with pre tax dollars to do things that
Speaker 2: are good for you. And I think there's all kinds
Speaker 2: of things. And you know the greatest thing about my
Speaker 2: plan bill, you know what it costs zero doesn't cost
Speaker 2: a taxpayer anything because we basically just legalize the purchase
Speaker 2: of insurance to these co ops and then we legalize
Speaker 2: the establishment of health savings accounts for everybody. But it
Speaker 2: isn't the government funding these things. It would be private
Speaker 2: individuals funding them.
Speaker 3: I would love that approach.
Speaker 1: I think Democrat's eyes glaze over like a great white
Speaker 1: shark eating at tuna, because there's not government control, there's
Speaker 1: not government power, there's not campaign finance dollars raised, and
Speaker 1: the Republicans are taking the head on I think politically,
Speaker 1: even though I think most Americans understand what you and
Speaker 1: I are saying, but most Americans aren't covered by Obamacare,
Speaker 1: so it's someone else's problem now. Secondly, on the filibuster,
Speaker 1: I have many of my friends say it's time to
Speaker 1: nuke the filibuster. Donald Trump the President wants to nuke
Speaker 1: the filibuster two years ago or three years ago, except
Speaker 1: for Cinema and Mansion, the filibuster would have been nuked already,
Speaker 1: which means the Democrats could have done anything they wanted
Speaker 1: to do. Where do you stand on the filibuster? Is
Speaker 1: it going to be nuke the next time? The Democrats
Speaker 1: control everything, God forbid, and they will at some point,
Speaker 1: which means Puerto Rico, Washington, DC will be states God
Speaker 1: knows what's male in balloting would look like? Where do
Speaker 1: you stand on nuking the filibuster by the Republicans knowing
Speaker 1: the Democrats are going to do it the next time
Speaker 1: they can.
Speaker 2: I think the natural state of man is to be free.
Speaker 2: We're born free, and most government, most legislation takes away,
Speaker 2: either incrementally or in great chunks, takes away our freedom.
Speaker 2: So I don't want more legislation to pass easily with majority.
Speaker 2: We have several impediments to a direct democracy. We indirectly
Speaker 2: elect our representatives. We give each state two votes, which
Speaker 2: isn't very democratic. Kentucky has the same amount of votes
Speaker 2: that California has in the Senate. And then we have
Speaker 2: this filibuster, which means you have to get a super
Speaker 2: maginity to pass anything. It's frustrating because, like right now,
Speaker 2: we want to undo a lot of the crazy programs
Speaker 2: and Democrats put in place, but we you know, are
Speaker 2: unable to do it because of the filibuster. But you know,
Speaker 2: when the shoes on the other foot, you know, if
Speaker 2: we get rid of the philibuster, now we pass a
Speaker 2: lot of good stuff. Immediately when the Democrats take over
Speaker 2: and there's no filibuster, they pass it and so we'll
Speaker 2: ping pong back and forth from one to the other.
Speaker 2: And as much as I want to undo their programs,
Speaker 2: I think getting rid of the philibuster probably means more
Speaker 2: legislation passes. And there's a lot of bad ideas on
Speaker 2: both sides of the aisle. Most of the legislation pastor
Speaker 2: in Washington, takes away your freedom. So I still believe
Speaker 2: even the filibuster, because I think most of the ideas
Speaker 2: up here are rotten and we shouldn't encourage these people.
Speaker 1: When you and the Senate continued things status quo until
Speaker 1: January the thirtieth, part of that was doing something many
Speaker 1: people aren't happy in Kentucky about HEMP. I don't know
Speaker 1: how hemp was relatable to the Obamacare. But tell the
Speaker 1: American people what happened in that bill that angered many
Speaker 1: of the hemp farmers and marijuana grows in Ohio, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: and Indiana. Explain that to the American people.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, they kept talking about a clean cr
Speaker 2: CRS fancy the title for continued resolution or a spending bill,
Speaker 2: and a clean means that there weren't any extra policies
Speaker 2: on it. Well, Senator McConnell snuck in a policy change,
Speaker 2: and what his policy change does is it overrides all
Speaker 2: of the state laws on hemp. Doesn't really apply to
Speaker 2: cannabis or marijuana, but it applies to hemp. So in
Speaker 2: Kentucky we had passed laws regulate help. If you want
Speaker 2: to get a drink that has a little bit of
Speaker 2: THC in it from hemp, you can buy it in
Speaker 2: a liquor store. You have to be twenty one and
Speaker 2: it's significantly regulated. McConnell's language came in and changed the
Speaker 2: definition of the plant. It comes from a plant, so
Speaker 2: the farmers will all have to destroy all their plants.
Speaker 2: They will also have to destroy all their seeds, so
Speaker 2: the farmers will have to start over. But then the numbers,
Speaker 2: the percentage that he allow is way below what the
Speaker 2: Kentucky legislature voted on. So really these drinks will no
Speaker 2: longer be legal. So ninety eight percent of the products
Speaker 2: that are made from hemp are made illegal by Center
Speaker 2: McConnell's language. So he's destroyed the hemp industry. He helped
Speaker 2: to get it started, and now he's going to destroy it.
Speaker 2: But I'm still working on legislation. My legislation says that
Speaker 2: any state that chooses to regulate hemp, that their regulations
Speaker 2: would actually supersede the McConnell language. It's still a long shop,
Speaker 2: but I have one year until his language takes place,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to try to see if we can
Speaker 2: let states have their own laws instead of being bullied
Speaker 2: by the federal government.
Speaker 1: And lastly, there's a truck driver crisis in this country.
Speaker 1: I look at Texas setting the traffic stop of an
Speaker 1: eighteen wheel It took a wild turn when troopers realized
Speaker 1: the driver, guy named David Amaya, didn't have a commercial
Speaker 1: I didn't have a CDL. The group was part of
Speaker 1: a clan of Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans, Hondurans and Mexicans
Speaker 1: turn over to border patrol. And every day there's thousands
Speaker 1: of illegal truckers with made up CDLs operating over the
Speaker 1: super slabs of this great country. My old good friend
Speaker 1: truck and Boz who would be enraged? What can you
Speaker 1: do to make sure the illegals do not drive seventy
Speaker 1: five thousand pound trucks that are destroying American trucking and
Speaker 1: secondly causing death and destruction all over the country.
Speaker 3: Senator, what can we down about that?
Speaker 2: Enforcement? So legal, enforcem capturing, stopping, arresting, put these people
Speaker 2: in jail. But also liability. You know, there was some
Speaker 2: tragic cases of you know, whole families being killed by
Speaker 2: these truck drivers that don't speak English, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to make a U turn on the freeway recently. Well,
Speaker 2: that company should be liable for that. Now, it doesn't
Speaker 2: bring the family back, but it certainly will give the
Speaker 2: caution to these truck companies to quit by hiring people
Speaker 2: who are illegal, don't have licenses, or can't speak English
Speaker 2: or read English. So liability, but also enforcement. If you're
Speaker 2: captured doing this, you go to prison. And so I
Speaker 2: think that there's going to be. What we'll find over
Speaker 2: time is hopefully we'll have less of this.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll see what happens. Senator Rand Paul, thanks for
Speaker 1: coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. And you're saying on
Speaker 1: Thursday is going to be the vote on the extension
Speaker 1: of these subsidies, and what does your crystal ball say?
Speaker 3: Yay or nay? In the Senate.
Speaker 2: I think no Republican will support it, so we get
Speaker 2: about forty seven votes, all Democrats. I don't think any
Speaker 2: Republicans are going to support just extending it without reforming
Speaker 2: it at all. I'm not for extending a period. I'd
Speaker 2: try to replace it with the free market.
Speaker 3: God Bless America.
Speaker 1: Senator Rand Paul, thanks for coming on the Bill Cunningham
Speaker 1: Show this Tuesday afternoon to stay warm. Senator Ran Paul,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Thank you, God Bless America. Let's
Speaker 1: continue with more if a line becomes available, you know,
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