June 25, 2020

What the GOP field thinks about #SCOTUScare (HINT: They don’t like it!)

NOTE: Some candidates have not yet made a statement on the decision; their comments will be added as we get them.

Rand Paul:

This decision turns both the rule of law and common sense on its head. Obamacare raises taxes, harms patients and doctors, and is the wrong fix for America’s health care system.

As President, I would make it my mission to repeal it, and propose real solutions for our healthcare system.

As a physician, I know Americans need a healthcare system that reconnects patients, families, and doctors, rather than growing government bureaucracy.

Rick Perry:

The Obama Administration has ignored the text of the Affordable Care Act time and again, and today’s ruling allows them to continue to disregard the letter of the law. While I disagree with the ruling, it was never up to the Supreme Court to save us from Obamacare. We need leadership in the White House that recognizes the folly of having to pass a bill to know what’s in it. We need leadership that understands a heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all policy does nothing to help health outcomes for Americans.

With individual premiums up more than 50 percent and nearly 5 million people losing their health plans, Americans deserve better than what we’re getting with Obamacare. It’s time we repealed Obamacare and replaced it with truly affordable, patient centered-health care reform, and I look forward to laying out my ideas on this issue.

Carly Fiorina:

It is outrageous that the Supreme Court once again rewrote ObamaCare to save this deeply flawed law despite the plain text and in the face of overwhelming evidence that the law is not working for the majority of Americans.

ObamaCare has not lived up to what we were promised. Instead of more affordable care, premiums are rising. Instead of allowing those with insurance to stay on the plans they knew and liked, millions of people have been compelled to buy health plans that they didn’t want. Many have been forced to move to Medicaid and yet more doctors are refusing to take Medicaid patients under this law. We were promised improved access and higher-quality care, but the complexity of ObamaCare is preventing the very competition that would allow more and better options for patients. Instead, hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies are all consolidating. Instead of reducing the need for emergency care, we’re seeing more ER visits. There are a whole set of problems we’ve created and it has become clear that this law isn’t working.

The lasting solution here is what we’ve been saying all along. We need to repeal ObamaCare. It hasn’t worked. We need to do the one thing we’ve never tried in our healthcare system—real competition. We know that competition provides lower prices and higher quality. But instead of a free market, healthcare so far has been a regulated oligopoly. We used to regulate insurance companies in all 50 states and now, we’ve nationalized that process. All Americans agreed with President Obama’s goals of quality, affordable care, but that is not what we got. And competition doesn’t mean eliminating care for those with preexisting conditions. States should administer high-risk pools for those who have real needs. We’ve seen this in action – New Hampshire was able to administer high-risk pools effectively before Obamacare.

People are frustrated with a political class in Washington more interested in preserving their own power than solving the problems in front of them. Americans want Washington to stand up for them, to step up to the plate and solve the very real problems facing our nation. They want better access and better care – things that we know only come from competition. This doesn’t mean we end all regulations on our healthcare industry. But it does mean we find a fair balance that ensures access and quality while ending the grip of crony capitalism on our healthcare market. It’s time for a real solution: repeal Obamacare and let the free market—not more crony capitalism—improve access and care for all Americans.

Marco Rubio:

Jeb Bush:

I am disappointed by today’s Supreme Court ruling in the King v. Burwell case. But this decision is not the end of the fight against Obamacare.

This fatally-flawed law imposes job-killing mandates, causes spending in Washington to skyrocket by $1.7 trillion, raises taxes by $1 trillion and drives up health care costs. Instead of fixing our health care system, it made the problems worse.

As President of the United States, I would make fixing our broken health care system one of my top priorities. I will work with Congress to repeal and replace this flawed law with conservative reforms that empower consumers with more choices and control over their health care decisions.

Here is what I believe: We need to put patients in charge of their own decisions and health care reform should actually lower costs. Entrepreneurs should be freed to lower costs and improve access to care – just like American ingenuity does in other sectors of the economy.

Americans deserve leadership that can actually fix our broken health care system, and they are certainly not getting it now from Washington, DC.

Mike Huckabee:

Today’s King v. Burwell decision, which protects and expands ObamaCare, is an out-of-control act of judicial tyranny. Our Founding Fathers didn’t create a “do-over” provision in our Constitution that allows unelected, Supreme Court justices the power to circumvent Congress and rewrite bad laws. The Supreme Court cannot legislate from the bench, ignore the Constitution, and pass a multi-trillion dollar “fix” to ObamaCare simply because Congress misread what the states would actually do. The architects and authors of ObamaCare were intentional in the way they wrote the law. The courts have no constitutional authority to rescue Congress from creating bad law. The solution is for Congress to admit they screwed up, repeal the “nightmare of ObamaCare”, and let states road-test real health care reforms.

Everywhere I go, I talk to American families who keep getting punched in the gut with outrageous insurance premiums and infuriating hospital bills. ObamaCare was railroaded through Congress to ‘solve’ our healthcare problems, but five years later, American families are getting railroaded by runaway mandates, big government bureaucracy, and out-of-control healthcare costs. ObamaCare is a $2.2 trillion Washington disaster that raided billions from Medicare and did nothing to fix our broken system of ‘sick care,’ which rewards irresponsibility and penalizes commonsense. As President, I will protect Medicare, repeal ObamaCare, and pass real reform that will actually lower costs, while focusing on cures and prevention rather than intervention. The status quo is unfair, unaffordable, unsustainable, and completely un-American.

Rick Santorum:


Bobby Jindal:

Today, the Supreme Court had its say; soon, the American people will have theirs. President Obama would like this to be the end of the debate on Obamacare, but it isn’t. The debate will continue because the law has failed to accomplish its prime objective: Containing health care costs.

Republicans must outline a clear and coherent vision for health care to win the trust of the American people to repeal Obamacare. And right now, I am the only candidate to put forward a comprehensive plan. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled, the debate will grow. Conservatives must be fearless in demanding that our leaders in Washington repeal and replace Obamacare with a plan that will lower health care costs and restore freedom.

George Pataki:

Tags Jeb BushLindsey GrahamRand PaulSCOTUS
Category 2016NewsPolitics

About author

Teri Christoph
Teri Christoph 249 posts

Teri Christoph is one of the original founders of Smart Girl Politics. In addition to her work at SGP, Teri is a full-time fundraiser for conservative candidates and causes. She lives in Leesburg, VA, with her husband and four children. You can contact Teri at [email protected].

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