Kimberly Leonard of the Washington Examiner reports on the freshman U.S. senator who wants to wade into the difficult debate over health care reform.
When President Trump tried to brand Republicans as the “party of healthcare” last year, most GOP lawmakers looked the other way, unenthusiastic about reviving the failed Obamacare repeal effort of 2017.
But Republican Mike Braun of Indiana, who was elected to the Senate in the 2018 midterm elections, thought the title was worth pursuing.
“Of course no Republicans picked up the gauntlet,” Braun said in an interview at his office. While he acknowledged that creating a conservative alternative to Obamacare would be a risky political strategy ahead of the 2020 elections, Braun, 65, said the GOP would soon need to lay out its vision for healthcare. Otherwise, the party would “lose out, just like we did when Obamacare happened.”
“I think the Democrats have pretty much out-maneuvered us on [healthcare] over time,” Braun said. If Republicans aren’t prepared, he warned, then the United States would move in the direction of putting everyone onto a government-funded healthcare plan similar to what Bernie Sanders proposes with “Medicare for all.”
Braun, who ran an auto parts distribution company before coming to Congress, said he hoped his ideas would get more attention. Like many conservatives, he wants to bring down costs through boosting competition, including by allowing less-expensive generic drugs to come to market faster, and by providing more information to patients so they can compare prices.
The healthcare industry, Braun said, should operate more similarly to other sectors where costs aren’t hidden. One of the bills he introduced, the True Price Act, would codify a Trump administration rule, now facing a lawsuit, that requires hospitals to post prices for their services.
