Sen. Cassidy on Obamacare: Directly Giving Americans Money Can Help Offset High Deductibles Under the ACA

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
BRENNAN: “But I just want to clarify what you are courting with the present on here because is it to buy your own insurance policy which is kind of complicated or is it to use this flexible spending account you’ve talked about for related health care needs like are there restrictions on how you can use that money”

CASSIDY: “So first or. 2 types of premium tax, credits, there’s the baseline premium tax credit, which was part of ObamaCare that would stay in effect on people, would still buy a policy, for example, get in a car wreck, something disastrous. They need somebody negotiate on their behalf with all the providers that stays the same boat. We’re talking about the shutdown was over the enhanced premium tax credits policies, it becomes so expensive. Under ObamaCare, Joe Biden Democrats passed a nother subsidy on top of the first century. That’s what we’re fighting about and what Republicans are saying like to help Democrats will do, have wait a second if we can have lower premiums and help people with their deductible by giving the money directly to the patient by the way 20 per cent doesn’t go for insurance, company, profit and overhead. A hundred percent goes for health care. Why Don’t We unite Republicans and Democrats and doing that? That’s where the press it is? You got to figure some things out, but we’re a lot further along than you might imagine.”

BRENNAN: “So, do you want to fix ObamaCare, or do you want to eliminate ObamaCare?”

CASSIDY: “First, you have to like to have gone into 20 20 six. That’s like a month and a half from now right and so you’ve got to work with what you have, but on the other. Hand, ObamaCare was a top heavy administratively heavy type system in which a lot of money is a lot of money and a responsibility is taken from individuals and given to insurance companies as one example. I’m a doctor, I work for 20 years in a hospital for the uninsured. I found that if you give the patient the power good things happen, that support of what, by the way by the medical literature, If the pay she is engage in or health care in the health care of her family she’s, going to be a. Why shopper wise for her health and wise for her pocketbook, we need to have a new model and that model is to engage the patient in our own healthcare. Doing so is good for her good for us all.”

BRENNAN: “Okay, what you said we we need to work with what we have that is, as you just said, You have a short amount of time before the end of the year. Do you think you need to extend the health care tax subsidies that are currently in place. Until, you figure out all the rest of this complicated policymaking.”

CASSIDY: “Coming back, you have just a little bit more written the say: everybody assumes it’s easy, just to extend the premium tax rates, the it has premium. Tax credits, this not that easy. Fifty percent of the states did not plan on them, be an extended and they don’t have rates as if they were to be extended. So that means, if we pass this mid December, they got to recalculate rates in time for wait. A second by that time are already and 20 20 six. It’s not an easy matter, and by the way that I mention the policies of people want the lower the premiums for have six thousand dollar deductibles is basically something for insurance companies to make money off of and for the individual to Wade through six thousand dollars of debt before they can find the access it now. The the kind of proposal I am proposing, Republicans or Democrats will join us. Take that money and we have a mechanism to do so. We give it to the patient by given her that money. She could chew, choose a bronze level plan, which is this a lower premiums, so now our premiums or down, but she has money and they count to help with a deductible, and I think we can figure that out about as easily as we can figure out what we would do if we just that, a straight out extension.”

BRENNAN: “So you want to do all this, though, by the second week of December, when that Democrats have been promised, they’ll have a vote on an acl bell of their choice.”

CASSIDY: “Yes- and I tell my democratic colleagues- first less be Democrats and Republicans- that’s be Americans representing all of Americans. That’s recognize what you’re doing just gives money to insurance companies, but we can do it better with lower premiums and with money and accounts to pay deductibles. And then Why Don’t We come together? There can be a democratic bill and a Republican bill and both fail. That’s to an American bill where the American people benefit and this work together, collaborate the low those premiums and help them with that. First dollar coverage in the and the deductible”