From shifting costs from himself onto his employees to forcing them to shop around for more expensive prescriptions, Rep. Braun admitted ugly truths about his health care philosophy on last week’s press call

INDIANAPOLIS – Rep. Braun further exposed the problems with his company’s health care plan in a press call last week, including revealing that he’d all but kicked employees off prescription drug plans that they’d preferred in an attempt to cut his own costs.

Rep. Braun held a press call last week with Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) in an attempt to better explain his company’s health care plan, but instead he ended up making the plan look even worse. Notably, Rep. Braun talked about how when he switched to his high-deductible plan, he raised costs on his employees and forced them to find new plans. He bragged about ordering his employees to “get on the internet” to find different prescriptions even when they ended up costing more than they had paid under the previous regime.

As he has throughout the campaign, Rep. Braun also repeatedly brought up on the call the idea of making sure his employees had “skin in the game,” making it increasingly evident that Rep. Braun’s plan was to make sure that his employees paid increasingly more for their health care so his company could pay less. On the call, Rep. Braun said he told an employee paying $120 a year for a prescription with a $10 dollar co-pay that they should shop around for different medication that ended up costing them $200 with no co-pay – more than ten times what they had been paying previously.

Rep. Braun even went as far as to attack employees who cost him money because they’d actually used their health care, mocking the people who struggled most after switching to his high deductible plan while describing them as people who had needed to use the system “intensively on a minor health care basis.” Considering Rep. Braun’s company’s history of firing employees who needed medical treatment so they could no longer use the company’s plan, it should have come as no surprise that he would show particular anger towards people who cost him money by actually using their health care.

“Any Hoosier who thought Rep. Braun’s health care plan was bad before should have heard how he talked about it on his press call last week. His strategy of making his own employees pay $10,000 for their deductible and forcing them to leave health care and prescription drug plans they liked and ‘shop around’ all appear to be so that he can shift the cost of health care away from himself and onto them,” said Michael Feldman, spokesman for the Indiana Democratic Party. “Rep. Braun’s mantra on health care is simple: He pays less so that you pay more, and if you like your prescription drug plan, you shouldn’t be allowed to keep it.”

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