FOX "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren" - Affordable Care Act Implementation

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

VAN SUSTEREN: Senator, nice to see you, sir.

SEN. RAND PAUL, R-KY: Good to be here.

VAN SUSTEREN: Shocking news to many tonight, the email from Henry Chao about the rollout. Your thoughts?

PAUL: Well, I thought the president said if he knew anything about this he probably wouldn't have opened up and started the exchanges. It's surprising, startling that a lot of knowledge was that they weren't ready for prime time and yet they went ahead with it anyway.

VAN SUSTEREN: First of all, if I were on any of the committees, I would go back and look at Henry Chao's testimony, see if anything he said under oath conflicted with this email because this email shows, on September 25th, he certainly knew. In fact, actually, what he attached to it was a screen shot of the website. And the screen shot of the website says, "The system is down at the moment." So he knew that.

PAUL: Yeah, we are finding out that -- my staff and myself, we are trying to get on ObamaCare because we have to sign up through the exchanges. We are familiar with the error screen.

VAN SUSTEREN: In looking at Henry Chao's emails -- and he is the CMS tech official -- what struck me is what is not there. In the courtroom, we do something called impeachment by omission, what are you not saying? What he is not saying is absolutely nothing about the American people. What he is saying is he is worried about the media ramping up the hyperbole about HC.gov not functional. So he is worried about what the media would say about them. Not one word about the American people.

PAUL: See, if this were a private business, they would be worried about it being functional, not a media reaction. They would want to make sure it was going to work. And it's really the problem here. We were turning over a sixth of our economy to the government, which doesn't work on profit motive, doesn't have to please the customer. I know this firsthand. I have been a physician for 20 years. I have already been dealing with the health care through government through Medicare and Medicaid, and personally, it's not very friendly. But it's always been the physician that had to deal with an unfriendly government. Now it's every consumer in America. Every individual patient in America has to deal with unfriendly government. I think we are finding they are not going to be too pleased.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, these emails tonight. And last night, President Obama pretty much suggested that the GOP was in the way of fixing these glitches. Are you in the way?

PAUL: Interesting thing is we offered -- before all of this came out we offered him a pass. We offered him a whole year where he didn't have to go through this individual mandate. None of this that he is going through right now would have happened if he would have taken us up on his offer. And our offer really was, during the middle of the shutdown, we were offering a compromise. One year delay of the mandate and he would have avoided a lot of this.

VAN SUSTEREN: Where does this leave us now? I mean, you know, I guess it might be particularly appalling to the American people to find out that they care more about the media going after them for a website they knew about wasn't going to work as of October 1. But, what about the American people? Where does this lead us?

PAUL: Well, I don't think it's fixable. I will vote to try to fix it. I will vote to try to help people not have their insurance canceled. Really, it's too late. What have happened is the five million people that have been canceled, even if you say you can go back to your previous policy, the policies don't exist. And the insurance companies have been given a perverse incentive. They are told, you know what, we are going to force your customers to buy more expensive policies. So they are not going to offer the cheaper policies anymore.

VAN SUSTEREN: If you can't fix this and if they are not going to offer the cheap policies and if this is a mess that can't be fixed, is there any way to roll it back to where we were? Are we too far down the track?

PAUL: You could, but the president would have to admit that he has failed and that it is not going to work. He may have to. I never really thought it could be this bad. This is worse than I ever imagined it could be. But it could spiral and get worse. Because, over the next year, if young healthy people don't sign up because it costs too much, then it costs even more. So, if by the end of the year this becomes a high-risk pool and only the sickest people get insurance, and no young healthy people buy it, they have to readjust their prices and they go higher, and there is even more incentive for young people not to buy insurance, which drives the prices even higher.

VAN SUSTEREN: Which is sort of interesting. Your home state, actually Kentucky, actually seems to be working well. It's a state exchange. You took a Medicaid expansion, your state did. You have young people signing up in a proportion that at least statistically looked good.

PAUL: Maybe. I mean, still 40 times more people have been canceled than are signing up. 7,000 people have signed up, and 280,000 people have been canceled. Many of them are young and healthy that have been canceled because this is the individual market. So, by far and away, more people have been canceled than have signed up. So, I'm not sure they can really call Kentucky a success.

VAN SUSTEREN: Before we go, one quick question on Detroit. Detroit is a mess but you have an idea?

PAUL: We're excited. We are going to go announce something called Economic Freedom Zones. This is bringing low taxes and less regulations to impoverished areas. We think this is the kind of stimulus that's leaving more of your own money in your own hands that could actually work to help Detroit.

VAN SUSTEREN: Senator, thank you, sir. Nice to see you.

PAUL: Thank you.

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