Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., ended his long Wednesday by rousing a crowd of 400 students for the cause of liberty, and he kept the message about healthcare.
“For six months I’ve been trying to kill their bill because it doesn’t repeal Obamacare. It’s worse than not repealing it. It’s the epitome of crony capitalism,” Paul said to his audience at the Young Americans for Liberty National Convention, an annual gathering of students who are involved with the nationwide libertarian campus organization.
Paul has been very critical of the Republican healthcare effort, which in his view has not focused enough on repealing the regulations and taxes created by Obamacare and has focused too much on giving taxpayer money to insurance companies.
“They take money that they were giving to the poor for healthcare and give it to the rich who run the insurance companies.”
His libertarian-inspired message is that healthcare, as with virtually every other political issue, can be solved by freedom of choice. The problem in Washington, especially when it comes to healthcare, is a lack of faith in just that.
“They have insufficient confidence in capitalism; insufficient confidence in freedom. They are just afraid that it might not work if we left people up to their own devices. They want to tell all of us what to do. They don’t think you’re smart enough to make decisions on your own,” he said.
Paul is under no illusions about the healthcare woes of the last few decades, but the solution that will solve them looks nothing close to those being proposed. “I was a physician for 20 years before Obamacare and I tell people healthcare sucked before Obamacare, and it sucked worse with Obamacare,” Paul said. “And if we still have the federal government involved in whatever the solution is, it’s going to suck even more.”
