CNN "Erin Burnett Outfront" - Affordable Care Act

Interview

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BURNETT: One of the states that they say is outpacing enrolment estimates is actually Kentucky, obviously your state. And they say the Kentucky demographics that have come out have shown 41 percent of the people who have sign up on the state-run web site were under the age of 35. That's above the magic number, 40 percent means Obamacare can work in terms of the young. And obviously Kentucky seems to be exceeding that. That's pretty impressive. Are you going to say Kentucky is a success story for Obamacare?

SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KENTUCKY: What I would say is that what is extraordinary about Kentucky situation is that 40 times more people have been canceled than have signed up, 280,000 people have had their insurance canceled under Obama care and 7,000 have signed up. So the number being canceled dwarfs the number actually signing up. So no, if that's a success, I hesitate to see a failure.

BURNETT: And look, I understand your point. Of course, someone might say, once the web site is working, you'll get some of those people to sign up or the plans that will be offered are better. And I know those are fair conversations and discussions we can have. At least I have to get you on the record. If young people are signing up in Kentucky, and you're getting that there, that opens the door to Obamacare succeeding, right? You have to acknowledge that.

PAUL: Maybe. The thing is if you have 280,000 people canceled, a lot of them were young people. What is going to happen is the expense was less for people that are being canceled. Their policies are being canceled because they're less expensive than Obamacare. So they're going to be asked to sign up for Obamacare and I don't think they will because their premiums are going to rise. The most important statistic is, 40 times more people are being canceled in Kentucky than are actually signing up.

BURNETT: Those people though, right? Over time will have some sort of health care, some of them can pay the penalty. You're totally right.

PAUL: Well, maybe, maybe. The thing is they'll to have choose something. They're being canceled because they have something less expensive and President Obama wants them to buy one of his four plans which are more expensive.

BURNETT: But will have better care.

PAUL: Maybe. I mean, if you're a 24-year-old guy, you really don't care if you have dental care for your kids if you don't have any kids or pregnancy coverage for a wife if you're not married or infertility coverage if you're not married. So it gets better, but it is more expensive and it may not be what you want. It doesn't apply to you. It applies to somebody else.

BURNETT: As a doctor, are not you concerned about the fact that a lot of people say, I'm going on buy what I want and I want to buy bare bones. But then something happens to them that they don't expect and they expect the system paid for by other people who have insurance, by taxpayers, to come in and bail them out, right, via the emergency room or some other sort of care.

And as a doctor, doesn't that frustrate you? Isn't the whole point to make everybody pay in so you don't have people who think, I don't want this but then free load off the system when they need it?

PAUL: Well, I'm for more freedom of choice and less coercion. Obamacare coerces you to buy certain products. I'm for letting people buy any product they want. And I will tell when you people could buy anything they wanted, that the problem, there are 15 percent of our public that was uninsured. A third of them were young, healthy people who made between $50,000 and $75,000 a year. They were not buying it because it was expensive.

So they had money and now it is more expensive. So really, a third of our problem of the uninsured was due to the expense and we're now making it more expensive. So I think we've actually made the problem worse. So I really don't see a big upside to this. With all the cancellations, I see young people losing their insurance and being forced to buy something they don't want that is more expensive. That is coercion. That's not freedom.

BURNETT: Is there a way for someone like to you say, especially given your expertise, that you can try to make this better? You were an early supporter of the defund Obamacare effort obviously. You championed the government shutdown in order to do so. I want to play for what you the president said about that today.

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BURNETT: He has a point there. The point you're raising about the young people is straight to it. Couldn't you say one way to make them sign up would be the raise the penalty so if the penalties rise, it makes more send for them to sign up for the health care. Then you're helping making this thing work instead of advocating for its failure.

PAUL: Yes, but listen to your words, Erin, make people, mandate, coerce, I'm for more freedom of choice where individuals can buy what they want, what they can afford to buy. I'm not for mandates. I'm not for telling people what they can buy and really it's antithetical to everything we stand for as a country. And that's why this has never been about health care. It is about freedom of choice.

The president wants to you pick only from his four choices. If you choose something else, he will call it a name like substandard, but it is what you chose to buy because it is what could you afford and it is what you wanted. He wants to you buy something that you may not need or want.

BURNETT: Look, I see your point. I come back to this point, which is people say they want freedom of choice. I don't want to pay for it. When something happens to them, they expect to get the care paid for by somebody. That's part of the reason our coast are so high to begin with.

PAUL: Yes, I don't think anybody should expect to get something for free and people should pay. When I was a physician and people could not pay, some of them paid on instalments, some of them paid a little bit over time. Some of them never paid me and that does happen. But I think physicians and hospitals have dealt with this since the beginning of time and it isn't perfect.

I'm not saying the old system was perfect either. What I would have done was expand competition and make prices more elastic. Let prices go up and down and have cheaper policies with higher deductibles because then competition would bring prices down.

BURNETT: And of course deductibles are a big issue. A lot of these deductibles are very high on these plans being offered. But when you talk about being for freedom and not liking words like force and mandate, it brings me to a question, what is a conservative? I think it's an important question because you're vying against a lot of people who maybe running in 2016 including yourself. Here are two of your possible opponents this week talking about how they're really conservatives.

GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), NEW JERSEY: Some Republicans say because I got 61 percent of the vote in New Jersey, he must not be conservative because how can a conservative win those? This is completely crazy to me.

JEB BUSH (R), FORMER GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA: I'm a conservative and I'm a practicing one.

BURNETT: I'm a practicing one. That sounds like a religion. Of course, you know Jeb Bush is in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has said people should be able to marry whoever they want to marry. Do those two gentlemen fit your definition of a conservative?

PAUL: You know, I don't think any one person gets on decide what is or is not conservative. On the case of the New Jersey governor, I think embracing Obamacare, expanding Medicaid in his state is very expensive and not fiscally conservative. Many Republican governors did resist expanding and accepting Obamacare in their states. I would say that fact, I would say, would lead you toward making the conclusion that it is not a very conservative proposal.

BURNETT: All right and our thanks to Senator Rand Paul. Please we look forward to your feedback on that interview.

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