Less than one day after House Republicans publicly revealed the American Health Care Act, their highly-anticipated plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., sat down with the Washington Examiner for an in-depth interview on that legislation and other leading issues facing Republicans in Congress this session. Massie, a libertarian-leaning opponent of the GOP establishment, is an important voice on Capitol Hill. As a representative located squarely in the middle of Trump Country, Massie’s experiences with his constituents in northeastern Kentucky are helpful to understanding the mood of an electorate that remains mysterious to many Beltway observers.
Key insights from Massie’s sit-down with the Washington Examiner are excerpted below.
On the AHCA
MASSIE: I think it’s a stinking pile of garbage. I think it was written by the same people that wrote Obamacare; that’s why it looked so similar – the insurance lobby. Shortly after coming to Congress, maybe six months after coming to Congress so, that would have been four years ago, roughly, after meeting with Eric Cantor and sitting through some GOP conferences, I came home one week and told my wife, “If Eric Cantor were cleaning his office, deep cleaning, and he moved the desk and found a button on the wall down low that said ‘repeal Obamacare,’ not only would he not push it, he would hide it with his desk again.” That’s how much they don’t want to repeal Obamacare.
On the AHCA and the insurance lobby
MASSIE: The committee that’s writing this bill receives the most money from the health insurance lobbyists. That’s where – in fact, probably everybody on that committee receives max checks from most of the health insurance companies, whether you’re Republican or Democrat. It’s like a roulette wheel, and they’re putting money on every number, red or black because the odds are in their favor.
On how to fix healthcare
MASSIE: I think to fix [healthcare] you’ve got to throw all the health insurance lobbyists out of the room and sit down and bring some doctors and some real people in and build it from the ground up.
On the potential political risks of Obamacare repeal
MASSIE: The peril is in not doing what we said we were going to do. There are some voters, like you said, it will energize the left, too — they’ll have better turnout if we actually get this across the finish line. So, there is some danger. But I think the real danger, and this is Trump’s danger, too, is if it gets here and doesn’t do what people send him here to do
On how health insurance companies have impacted coverage
MASSIE: What’s happened is you’re ending up with stuff in that bundle that you don’t need, like your cable package. I don’t want MSNBC, but to get Fox, I’ve got to pay for it… Insurance now, it’s just a bundle. You are buying access to healthcare at a price and a quality that you don’t get to shop for anymore when you go through the middle men.
I have Netflix, which is probably what people need in terms of healthcare, the ability to buy what they want when they need it, and know what the actual price is.
On allowing kids to remain on their parents healthcare plans until 26
MASSIE: Hell, I’d let you have Grandma on your plan – like up to 100, right? Because that expands your pool. As long as the cost for that is built in the price, why not let me have a bigger pool on my plan? I’ll take my cousins, I’ll take, you know, and expand it so, now I’ve got some purchasing power if I’ve got a pool of 30. As long as the price is built into that.
On his bill to abolish the Department of Education
MASSIE: If I had introduced that bill even with, say, George Bush as president, nobody would take it seriously. But there’s a dimension of it with Trump in the White House — I say he’s the first president since Reagan who would actually sign that bill if it went through the House and Senate. I don’t know that he’s going to come over here and start whipping for that bill. I’m trying to get liberals to be for it, now that Betsy DeVos is in charge of the Department of Education. But you know, it was a campaign promise of mine and I hadn’t introduced the bill yet.
On immigration
MASSIE: I think we need to control immigration if we’re going to have a welfare state. And I don’t see us getting rid of the welfare state. Given the appetite Republicans have for rolling back the Medicaid expansion recently, I don’t see much appetite for rolling back the welfare state here. So, I think you do have to control immigration.
On Trump meddling in the market with decisions like the Carrier deal
MASSIE: I think you’ve got to be for your state. If you’re elected as a governor, you’ve got to be for your state. And Trump wants to be for this country. So, his idea is to do for the United States what governors are doing, each of them for their own states.
On support for Trump in rural areas with low-income residents
MASSIE: When you point to those regions of Kentucky and say they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re voting against their own self interest, no, it’s the people that are working their butts off and have been working their butts off that are at the tipping point. And they’re tired of watching their neighbors live off them. So, those are the ones that are turning out, and it’s sort of a turnout model. There are still more people that work than don’t work, even in those areas and those are the people – whether they’re registered Republican or Democrat.
On Trump’s tax returns
MASSIE: I don’t think he’s under any obligation to release his tax returns. He got elected not releasing them. That’s a condition that the voters may have demanded, but it’s not a condition of being president; definitely not. I think he should just plow forward.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
