PBS "NewsHour" - Transcript

Interview

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And for the other side, we turn to Texas Senator John Cornyn. He is a member of the Senate Republican leadership team. I also talked to him earlier this evening.

Senator Cornyn, thank you very much for joining us.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN, R-Texas: Glad to do it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What is your view of what this ruling by the court means for the country?

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: Well, the Supreme Court has done its job, which means now the ball's back in Congress' court.

While the court said this mandate is constitutional, as you know, it's very, very unpopular, as is this law in general. And so I believe it's now incumbent on Congress to take up health care reform once again. And I think we need to start over and to build a system that doesn't take over the health care system, but one that's more responsive to consumers, doesn't interfere with the doctor/patient relationship, and focuses on reducing costs.

That's one thing Obamacare didn't do. In fact, it raised premiums for most people that already had health insurance.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let me ask you about that, because the court has now ruled the act is constitutional. It passed both houses of Congress. The president signed it. The debate has gone on for several years.

Why does Congress -- why do you and other Republicans think it needs to be voted all over again?

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: Well, we can't afford it.

And that's one reason. And the problem is that while the Supreme Court can say what's legal, what's constitutional, it doesn't make policy. That's given to -- the responsibility is given to the elected representatives of the people in Congress. And the American people don't like this bill. They don't like the individual mandate.

And, of course, we're learning -- we continue to learn that many of the promises that were made by the president and others that if you like what you have, you can keep it, that premiums will be reduced by family, per families of -- by $2,500 -- we're seeing that prices for their premiums are going up.

So I think this comprehensive health care reform has proven largely to be a failure. And that's why I think we need to start again.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, the president said today, as I'm sure you know -- he said the 250 million Americans who already have health care insurance are going to be able to keep it. He said it's just going to be more secure and it's going to be more affordable.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: Well, I'm sorry to say this, but the president's wrong. That's not true.

Indeed, most of the predictions by groups like McKinsey, the business consulting group, is that once these state-based insurance exchanges are created, that all of the incentives are going to be for employers to drop their employees from their coverage -- we're already beginning to see that -- and that as many as 30 percent, maybe as high as 60 percent or more will find themselves dropped from their employer-provided coverage.

And this is in addition to the fact, Judy, that in order to finance this, we have seen new taxes now, as the Supreme Court's called this a tax on the middle class, in effect, for the mandate. And we have seen other taxes that have gone up. And this is contributing to the slow growth, the recovery of the economy, because employers are telling me, we don't know what the rules are, we don't know how much this is going to cost, and we simply are not hiring new people.

So this has really been a real wet blanket on job creation in the country.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Senator, what would Republicans replace it with? If you were able to repeal it, what would you replace it with, and how quickly, and does that depend on President Obama being defeated?

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: Well, no.

He could work with us to do something that would be more popular, but, frankly, I'm not optimistic about that. This has made sure that this will be front and center for the presidential election and in Senate elections across the country. But what we need to do is to focus on holding down the costs.

One of the innovations that has done a good job of that is things like high-deductible insurance and health savings accounts, so people actually understand what costs are. We have also seen in the Medicare program with the prescription drug program this has really been one of the few successes we have seen in a government program like Medicare, where we actually have competition and transparency, and providers compete based on price and the quality of service.

And we have seen prices 40 percent below what was originally projected. Our friends on the other side of the aisle simply don't believe in competition and using the market to help discipline prices for consumers. Well, we know that works. And I think it ought to be given a chance.

JUDY WOODRUFF: At the same time, we're seeing nonpartisan research out there that shows health care costs in many parts of the country, that the dramatic rise that had been there has started to slow down. As you say, in some cases, the costs are even coming down.

So how does that square with the Republican argument that what the president is doing is going to raise the cost of health care?

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: Well, we can simply point to the cost of health care going up ever since the Obamacare bill was passed and signed into law and the fact that many costs don't become implemented or obvious until 2014.

Many employers, as I indicated earlier, will be incentivized to drop their employees from what is now a fringe benefit provided by the employer into these taxpayer-supported or supplemented insurance exchanges. And the costs there, Congressional Budget Office estimated that only about 7 percent of employers would do that.

As I indicated, McKinsey and others thinks it will be much higher. And indeed I think the incentives are such that no employer will maintain their employee-provided health care coverage if they could pay the penalty and get off cheaper, unless they have some legal or other obligation to their employees that prevents them from doing that.

So the costs are going to explode under these state-based insurance exchanges far beyond what we have seen already.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Senator, finally, does this replace the economy, jobs as the most important issue in this presidential campaign?

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: I think it certainly elevates health care to the top tier of issues.

But, really, I think what we're going to be talking about is the impact of this failed health care policy on job creation and on the economy generally, what an impediment it's been and why our economic growth is so slow, in part because of government overreach and big policies like this, which have increased the costs and made it harder on small businesses to create jobs and hire more people.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Senator John Cornyn of Texas, thank you very much for talking with us.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: Thank you, Judy.

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