Rand Paul says the GOP health-care bill is 'lit up like a Christmas tree full of billion-dollar ornaments'

published 2 July 2017

The Republican plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare is unlikely to succeed and would be far too expensive if it did, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said in an interiview on Fox News Sunday.

"The problem is I don't think we're getting anywhere with the bill we have," Paul said. "We're at an impasse. Every time you add more federal money, more spending for the big-government Republicans, it offends the conservatives," he continued. "So right now this bill — which is not a repeal — has become the kitchen sink. We have nearly $200 billion in insurance bailouts. Does anyone remember [Republicans] complaining that ObamaCare had insurance bailouts?"

"The bill is just being lit up like a Christmas tree full of billion-dollar ornaments," Paul added, pulling no punches in his critique of the plan proposed by his party's leadership. He proposed separating the current bill into two proposals, one to repeal ObamaCare and one to replace it. That approach would allow all Republican senators to support the repeal, Paul reasoned, while GOP and Democratic moderates could team up to pass replacement legislation.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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