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About 300 people sat scattered in the hyper-squeaky bleachers and in chairs on the floor of the Valley High School gym on Saturday morning to hear Dr. Rand Paul, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in next year's US Senate race, talk about health care reform.
“We need to get government out of the way to allow the marketplace to develop health insurance to be more like term life insurance,” Paul said, highlighting his central position on the issue.
“Capitalism works” in every industry except health care delivery, Paul said, because there is no competition on the basis of price. He said that, as with every other product or service that is provided for profit, prices for health care will come down if the provider market includes more competition.
(Dr. Paul himself is a doctor of ophthamology, which probably accounts for his views of health care as a product, since his business specializes in contact lenses and eye surgeries.)
The event was a town-hall style forum moderated by Louisville mayoral candidate Chris Thieneman, and Paul took questions from the crowd for about an hour and a half.
“The issue may be argued in Washington,” Thieneman said in an introduction, “but the bill will effect each and every one of us in a personal way.” (The introduction was about the extent of Thieneman's involvement with the event; he mostly sat back and let Paul call on people himself. Before the event, Paul joked that the burly Thieneman, who is maybe 6'5” and 240 pounds, was there in case things got out of hand.)
Beyond the groupthinkers who oppose health care reform because Barack Obama supports it, Rand Paul's supporters include the fierce libertarians who also support his father, Ron. In response to a question about the constitutionality of health care reform—the legislation has been criticized for not being constitutionally legitimate—he said that, if elected, he would support legislation that would require all new laws to be explicitly allowed for in the constitution.
Also attending the event were a number of local candidates and officials, including Larry Hausman and Marilyn Parker (Parker is running against John Yarmuth for the 3rd District seat in the US House; Hausman is still considering his run), and state senator Dan Seum.
Paul announced that he and his dad will be in Louisville for a town-hall style campaign event in January, although he will probably be back in town before then.
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John LaFollette