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