From Monday night’s Fox News All-Stars.
On whether the House will pass some kind of outright repeal of Obamacare:
Absolutely, for the symbolism and also for the message it sends, which is: If you give us a Republican Senate and a Republican in the White House, we will actually abolish this …
I think the second thing they ought to do is to attack the bill through hearings. I’m skeptical about taking away the funds because what it will do — it will poke holes in the system. It will make it more chaotic, it will allow some things to be enacted, others to be more slowly or clumsily enacted.
And in the end, if health care [reform] collapses, or if it becomes utterly unworkable, the Democrats will have a way of saying, well, it was all these injuries inflicted by the Republicans that made it not work.
I think the smarter approach it to simply expose to the American people what’s in the bill, all the arbitrariness, all the incredibly increased expenses, all the contradictions in it, also the inherent corruption in it, the favoritism, the waivers – all that’s inherent in a bill this complex where so much authority in regulation-writing is vested in the administrative branch, especially in the Department of Health and Human Services.
I think through hearings, which the Republicans can do now that they control the House, you’ll expose that … in a better way, whereas if you try to take away the funds, in the end you’re not going to succeed [in actually stopping enactment], but you may end up as the fall guy if the thing falls apart in chaos and incoherence.
On the revelation that the Obama administration has issued a rule giving Medicare payments to doctors who provide end-of-life counseling:
Well, I think what’s scandalous is that essentially the same idea was encompassed in a provision in the original law, in the original bill. I think it was article 1233, which was passed in the House and rejected in the Senate explicitly because of the uproar that was aroused by it. …
To then enact it through Medicare, through an administrative regulation, unilaterally, when the Congress had looked at it and rejected it, I think is [an] incredible example of administration arrogance and a way of going around what was clearly expressed as the will of the people. I think this is the kind of thing — exactly the kind of thing — you want to bring up in hearings so people will know what’s going on, [as] they may not have heard about it.