Exclusive–Mike Braun Slams Joe Biden’s ‘Preposterous’ Public Option Plan

Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) slammed former Vice President Joe Biden’s public option plan Tuesday as “preposterous” in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News.

Sen. Braun outlined his and other Republicans’ efforts to lead the way on healthcare reform as well as Democrats’ to enact Medicare for All and a government public health insurance option.

The Hoosier Republican’s interview with Breitbart News arises as Biden recently launched his healthcare platform, in which he claimed that, “if you like your private insurance, you can keep it,” echoing former President Barack Obama’s infamous claim that Americans could keep their health insurance plan and their doctor under Obamacare.

Millions of Americans lost their healthcare plan and their doctors after Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law.

“If you like your health care plan, your employer-based plan, you can keep it,” Biden said Monday, adding that “if you like your private insurance, you can keep it.”

Biden unveiled his alternative health care plan, which would create a “public option,” allowing a government health insurance option to compete with private health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. Biden’s plan would also offer access to health care for illegal immigrants.

Sen. Braun referred to the proposal as “enhanced Obamacare” noting the proposal has been a “constant failure;” which will serve as a gaffe for him during the campaign trail.

“Biden just came out with about the Obamacare enhanced— I mean I think that’s going to be a gaffe for him because we just live through it and it’s been a constant failure,” Braun said.

Sen. Braun said that Biden’s inclusion of healthcare access to illegal immigrant should make this plan “even more preposterous.”

However, the senator cautioned if Republicans fail to create an alternative to Biden’s public option plan or Medicare for All, the Democrats will win. Sen. Braun said that Democrats typically do better on “articulating” their healthcare proposals.

“They’re adding even more craziness to something that failed on its own simple merits, and however, all of that will take place if we do not produce a viable alternative, that’s through reforming the system,” Sen. Braun added.

“Because it’s like anything here, the Democrats generally articulate the issue of need better than we do, they always default to more government, which is always the easiest case to make, but for us, that’s not the solution,” he added.

Sen. Braun said that Biden’s plan could serve as a “slippery slope” to further government encroachment to single-payer Medicare for All and many Americans might “default” to Medicare for All “because they’re going to see that the system has not better made it better for them.”

Jonathan Allen of NBC News said Monday a public option essentially serves as a “backdoor” to single-payer health care.

“The public option is essentially a back door to Medicare for all,” Allen said. “You can say all day long if you want it’s not Medicare for all. But this is a different packaging of how to get there. In a general election, that’s a different question.”

Sen. Braun said Republicans need to become more aggressive to fix the healthcare industry because it does not operate in a free-market system.

Braun said, “I don’t think we have enough time to legislate the industry into fixing itself, we’ll keep doing it, and I don’t like it in the first place, it’s not free enterprise, it’s a broken industry that’s going to need to get a stick of government through legislation like we’ve got proposed. I just think that ought to be more aggressive because the industry is operating more like government does than it is a free enterprise entity because they don’t embrace of the things that work elsewhere: transparency, competition, many suppliers, few barriers to entry. They promote all of that stuff to benefit themselves.”

The Hoosier Republican said that Republicans need to do more “More industry pushback and I tell them every time to fix yourselves.”

Braun said that to fight Medicare for All and the Biden public option plan Republicans need, “Real results prices coming down, transparency on pharmaceuticals we’re going to throw it o the Biden campaign and some of the crazies that like Medicare for All. Blame it on the industry if it happens.”