U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), one of the few elected Republicans to speak out against President Trump’s tariffs agenda, says that — early on in the shutdown — most of his constituents in Kentucky are more worried about tariffs than the federal government pause or the healthcare issues at the root of it.
[Note: Republicans are blaming Democrats for the shutdown as Dems are demanding a reversal of GOP Medicaid cuts and an extension of tax subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), the expiration of which will raise insurance prices for millions of low and middle income families across the U.S. when the subsidies expire at the end of the year.]
During an interview this week, with the dramatic health insurance price changes still in the future, Sen. Paul said wherever he goes in Kentucky, people are complaining that tariffs are “killing the family farm, tariffs are killing the Bourbon industry, tariffs are killing the cargo car transport industry.”
The #1 concern I hear at home isn’t shutdowns… it’s tariffs.
Tariffs are crushing Kentucky’s family farms, bourbon makers, and shipping jobs.
Bad policy hurts working Americans. We don’t need more government handouts — we need freedom to trade and compete. @BloombergTV pic.twitter.com/eFE42ZmYUO
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 8, 2025
On concerns over healthcare, the Senator said that he hears mostly from small business owners “who are not in the Obamacare exchange but feel like they don’t have the leverage to get a good price.” He added, “So what I’ve been offering for years, for people who are worried about the price of healthcare, is I like to let people buy it through an entity like Costco, which has 44 million members.”
Paul added, “I’d like to make it legal for you just to go to Costco and then someone from Costco would negotiate for 44 million members and have the leverage to drop prices down.”
[NOTE: Costco is already in the insurance business, offering small and large business plans and making individual/family plans available through its partnership with the Custom Benefit Consultants (CBC), whose providers include Oscar, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and UnitedHealthcare.]
Paul has long advocated for the amending of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to allow non-employer membership organizations to offer health insurance to their members without requiring an employee relationship.
Paul contends the change would deliver powerful negotiating leverage – and therefore lower prices — to individuals that they currently don’t wield as employees of small business entities or as gig workers, etc.