Rand Paul has a plan to lower health care costs.

PUBLISHED: December 15, 2025 | www.baltimoresun.com

The Baltimore Sun recently sat down with Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul in his Russell Senate office for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on childhood and COVID vaccine mandates, the power of federal health agencies, the influence of Big Pharma, the future of the Affordable Care Act, and his proposals to lower healthcare and insurance costs. The interview has been edited for clarity.

Parents are told vaccines are voluntary, yet many find their kids can’t attend school without shots for diseases like hepatitis B, which affects the liver. If mothers can refuse the vaccinations in the hospital, should school requirements and vaccine guidelines be changed?

Most public schools in America will say they have to have the hepatitis B vaccine. And actually, most private schools follow the public schools. So, unless you teach your kids at home, eventually the school system is what forces you to get vaccinated.

There … [are] exemptions to different vaccines [allowed, based on medical, religious and philosophical factors, though the latter two categories vary by state]. And it really used to be part of the medical — the Hippocratic oath — that basically, if you were my patient, I would tell you and inform you about the risks and the benefits of anything: medicine, vaccines, whatever, and you and I would make the decision. And ultimately you would make the decision if you were my patient.

And it’s interesting right now that the vaccine committee is saying it’s going to be based on the individual choices [for the hepatitis B vaccine when infants are born to mothers who test negative for the condition] based on the patient and the physician talking about it. And it’s like, that’s not really that crazy. That’s the way it should be. It should be between the patient and the doctor, and a decision-making process. And everybody’s not the same.

A lot of people say they no longer trust hospitals, the health care system, or Big Pharma on vaccines, especially when safety data seems hidden. How do you see those concerns when it comes to hepatitis B and COVID shots?

I met a father [recently], and he’s a physician. His son’s a physician. His son was 35 and a triathlete. After the [COVID] vaccine, he developed an inflammation of the heart, myocarditis, leading to a heart transplant. So now, can we prove with certainty it came from the vaccine? [No,] but, you know, someone should be looking into that. It happened after the vaccine. And these are real questions we should have.

And the other question is: How much of a risk was a 35-year-old triathlete for dying from COVID? Close to zero.

And as for Big Pharma, is it all about greed?

It is about money. And people make the mistake that, “Oh, well, it’s about helping people and just trying to make people not suffer from disease.” It’s also about money — billions and billions of dollars. And because these recommendations in the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] vaccine committee go into a school schedule and virtually everybody has a kid go there — probably 98% of people’s kids go to public school — so it essentially becomes a mandate. But you’re enriching Big Pharma, basically. So Big Pharma makes a lot of money off of this. And they’re not disinterested.

So, if somebody says, “Well, I wonder what Pfizer thinks about this,” I don’t think Pfizer is an objective person to weigh in on whether we should get a vaccine or whether or not you should have the hepatitis vaccine or COVID vaccine for children. An objective person is someone who doesn’t receive money. Now, I’m not against money. I think earning money is part of capitalism. But I object to people making the money-making decisions on mandating that we use their product.

You know, we’ve observed in talking with many people, there’s a common thought that people today are no longer living. They’re surviving. Let’s talk about the Affordable Care Act. Premiums and subsidies have soared, and many working people feel trapped. If ending subsidies would hurt millions, where do you see the right balance?

I think what we should do is do something to bring the prices down. So, let’s say your insurance costs you $20,000 and we give you $10,000 from the government. Next year it’s going to cost $22,000. We’re going to have to give you $12,000. We keep chasing the prices higher.

What I want to do is let people buy their insurance as a group. So, for example, 44 million members of Costco — if we all joined Costco and there were 44 million members and one person was in charge of negotiating, that person would call up UnitedHealthcare and say, “I’ve got 44 million members. What price will you give me?”

Now, the difference is, if I’m a physician, I have four employees and I’m negotiating for the insurance for four employees. Nobody’s going to talk to me; they’ll just tell me what the price is. I have no leverage. So, insurance is a billion-dollar company, and I’m just a small, small business. I have no leverage with them. But if I join Costco or Sam’s Club or Amazon, I let them purchase for me.

So, I have a bill. These plans are called association health plans. I have a bill to legalize the ability to join a cooperative to negotiate your prices. And it’s funny because some of the words I use — collective bargaining, co-op — the people that promoted Obamacare did, but then they never allowed it.

Ultimately, are you in the minority with this direction? Do you have other support from your colleagues?

When I talk to most people in the Republican caucus about these association plans, they all kind of nod their heads and none of them really object, but they’re all really not considering it seriously, because I’ve had trouble getting it into the proposal.

Now, in the first Trump administration, I went and talked to Donald Trump in the White House, in the Oval Office, and he agreed with me. And by executive order, he tried to do these association health plans. We really had to change the law. The executive order didn’t go far enough. And then Democratic attorneys general sued him, and in the end, they weren’t really that successful.

I’ve talked to him again. You know, I have some controversies with him on occasion, but I did talk to him recently, and we exchanged some text messages back and forth. And he says he wants to support this idea again of letting people bargain to get cheaper prices for their insurance.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist, host of “The Armstrong Williams Show” and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.

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