Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said he doesn’t want to blow up Obamacare, but he does want to give Americans another option.
Senate Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., made their core shutdown argument about expiring Obamacare subsidies that they argued, if allowed to sunset at the end of this year, would lead to millions of Americans seeing their healthcare premium costs skyrocket.
But Scott and other Republicans contend that simply extending the current subsidies would see billions in taxpayer money funneled to insurance companies, without a dime actually finding its way to the pockets of Americans looking for insurance options.
His plan would ‘let the person be a consumer,’ he told Fox News Digital from an interview in his office.
‘I just think we ought to fix Obamacare,’ Scott said. ‘So the way I think about it is, look, if you want to buy off the exchange, you know, an Obamacare product, do it. If that’s what you want. I mean, leave that there.’
‘But I know what a consumer is going to do,’ he continued. ‘Consumers are going to be way more creative of how they take care of themselves.’
Scott said his idea, in a sea of burgeoning possibilities on what to do next when it comes to answering the healthcare issue raised by congressional Democrats, would directly send any kind of Obamacare subsidy money directly to a Health Savings Account (HSA).
His plan, which he’s been working on in the background for some time, was given extra credence when President Donald Trump on Saturday recommended to Senate Republicans that ‘the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over.’
‘In other words, take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, Obamacare,’ Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social.
Trump’s post was in response to Schumer and Democrats’ counter-offer to reopen the government, which Republicans quickly rejected, that would have extended the Obamacare subsidies by one year.
Should the subsidies be permanently extended, which was baked into Democrats’ original demand at the beginning of the shutdown, it would cost $350 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Scott viewed the latest proposal as nothing but pure politics and something that Republicans would never vote for.
‘It’s all about politics. It’s not about people,’ he said. ‘So I think Schumer and the Democrats are heartless. They’re absolutely heartless.’
It’s also an idea that Scott said he had spoken to the president about before.
Republicans have railed against the current state of the subsidies, which were enhanced under former President Joe Biden during the COVID-19 pandemic. The enhancement blew off the income cap on the subsidies, allowing people making well above the poverty line to qualify for them.
Scott blasted the current state of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies, but he noted that he was not suggesting that the subsidy be completely done away with.
‘You could be making $250,000 a year, so you’re paying for these people that are making $250,000 a year, and you’re paying with your taxes for them,’ Scott said. ‘How? Tell me how that makes sense.’
He hopes to have his legislative proposal done quickly, as others in the GOP are similarly floating ideas on how to tackle the issue of expiring subsidies and rising healthcare costs.
‘Let the consumer be the buyer of healthcare,’ he said. ‘Any dollars we’re going to give to spend on it goes to the consumer and let them buy what they want to buy.’