By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor
U.S. Senate Republican candidate Dr. Rand Paul made three stops in the Tri-County Saturday, speaking at London, Corbin and Barbourville.
Paul met with supporters at the Laurel County Courthouse before stopping at David’s Steakhouse in Corbin for a brief meet-and-greet.
Paul, a Bowling Green eye surgeon, said he was running for U.S. Senate because, “I’m truly worried about the state of our nation.”
He criticized President Obama for “apologizing for being an American,” and said, “I’m not embarrassed by capitalism, I’m not going to apologize because we have a capitalist society.”
He questioned the premise that the recession was due to “capitalist greed,” saying, “Did people just all of a sudden become greedy? Haven’t they always been greedy? My other question is, if it’s your money, it’s greed. If it’s my money, it’s self-interest... Self-interest to a certain extent is what we need for capitalism to make a profit, to drive efficiency.”
Introducing more capitalism into the health care system, he said, would be a better solution than introducing government-run health plans.
“We need to make health insurance more like term life insurance,” Paul said. “A term life insurance policy is 20 years. If I have a heart attack... and I survive, my health insurance can triple or they can drop me because I have a one-year plan. My term life insurance won’t change.”
He also suggested that a system of health insurance plans with lower insurance premiums, but greater out-of-pocket expenses for doctor’s visits, would increase competition among doctor’s offices and lead to lower medical costs.
“If you had to pay for every doctor visit and had, like a $2,000 deductible, what would happen is there would be a marketplace, and you’d ask the doctor’s price,” he said. “...There are two things I do in my practice that people pay cash for, contact lenses and Lasik surgery. Every year for 15 years, the price has been trending down.”
Paul said he has signed a pledge with the Read the Bill campaign that would require legislators to sign a statement that they have read a bill before they vote on it.
“The bills are thousands of pages long, printed at midnight, passed the next day and no one has a chance to read the bills,” he said.
He said he was also in favor of 12-year term limits for senators and representatives. When asked if he would self-impose a 12-year term limit if elected, Paul said “I’ve said it so much, I’d probably have a lot of egg on my face if I served a third-term.”
But he did not rule out the possibility, saying that if term limits were not implemented by law, “good” people would leave the Senate voluntarily while others stayed.
“The people who stay are not necessarily the good people,” he said.
Paul faces Elkton businessman and Navy veteran Bill Johnson and Secretary of State Trey Greyson in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat held by Jim Bunning, who is not seeking reelection.
