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By Joshua Roberts | The Paducah Sun

Sen. Rand Paul, appearing Thursday afternoon in Paducah, called for ratcheting down the rhetoric amid escalating threats of military action between the U.S. and North Korea.

A short time later, President Donald Trump followed his fire and fury comment from earlier in the week with a new warning to North Korea of trouble like few nations have ever been in trouble.

But Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, said war between the nations would be devastating on the Korean Peninsula, putting the Korean War to shame. He hopes war is averted.

Even with conventional weapons a million people could die in two weeks, in South Korea probably, said Paul during a stop at Midwest Aviation at Barkley Airport. I think we need to realize the things we say about nuclear weapons should not be said frivolously.

North Korean leaders need to understand, he said and I think they do, I think most countries know if they attack South Korea or us, the consequences will be mind-numbing, Paul said. It will be the end of North Korea. They need to know that. Thats a deterrence.

And, he added, We dont want to goad them into anything. When people are not completely rational, you dont want to stoke their irrationality.

During his visit, which lasted about 45 minutes, Paul also talked to the media and a small crowd about other issues including health care and Americas growing crisis with opioids.

Concerning painkillers, the senator said there is no easy answer.

More people are dying from opioid overdoses than are dying from car accidents, he said.

We do have to figure it out. I think physicians and health care need to acknowledge they may have been part of the problem, and they still may be part of the problem.

Paul cited a small, poor county in Kentucky with a few thousand residents. There, he said, three million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone had been prescribed.

Those are legal doses for a couple of thousand people, Paul said. Something is wrong with that. Some in the medical community admit that part of it is we are overprescribing.

Paul, who broke from party ranks to vote against the GOPs proposed health care overhaul, advocates stabilizing the individual insurance market by broadening group purchasing. He calls it collective bargaining for the consumer.

For example, he proposed allowing the roughly 15 million employees in the fast-food industry, many of whom arent covered, to buy group insurance through the National Restaurant Association.

My plan has always been to let people get out of the individual market, let them join associations, he said. It could be the National Restaurant Association, National Retail Association, it could be a variety of things.

I even mentioned Costco. There are 85 million people who belong to Costco why not let them buy their insurance through Costco?

There could be all kinds of solutions to level the equation when people are making a negotiation for their insurance. All the power now is with the insurance companies. Ask doctors. Ask nurses. Nobody has leverage. The insurer has all the power.

Before the Affordable Care Act, Paul said insurance companies made $6 billion per year in profit. After Obamacare, profits swelled to $15 billion per year, he said.

And they come to us with their hands outstretched, billionaire beseechers, where they want us to set up a system where they make even more money, Paul said.

The Republican leaderships plan would have provided a $280 billion bailout to insurance companies to offset adverse selection an insurance market top heavy with the sick and elderly, he said.

Im just absolutely against doing that, Paul said.

Giving associations group purchasing power would create leverage, he added, and bring competition back to many counties, many of which are down to one insurer, or in some cases, none at all.

Paul laid out his vision for healing the health care system.

The bottom line is if we want to fix health care, we have to have sufficient confidence in what made us a great country, he said. What made us a great country was basically we largely left you alone. The federal government didnt get involved in your business.

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Rand Paul wants to cool down the rhetoric - Insider Louisville

A recent Politifact fact checkfound that California Senator Kamala Harris statements arguing that it costs $33,000 a year nationally to incarcerate an inmate are in fact correct.

Harris told the incarcerated womens advocacy group Women Unshackled in Washington D.C. in July that it costs $75,000 a year to lock up an inmate in California.

Lets look at the fact that there is an issue around how much we are paying and again, this gets back to the economic cost it costs us about $33,000 a year to lock somebody up. In California it costs about $75,000 a year, Harris told the forum.

RELATED:Republican Senator Rand Paul and Democrat Kamala Harris are teaming up to seek bail reform

Harris, a Democrat, recently teamed up with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on bipartisan bail reform legislation toprevent accused minors from sitting in jail for their offenses if they cant afford bail.

An op-ed written by the senators targets the current discriminatory and wasteful bail system and its crippling effects on young offenders.

Our justice system was designed with a promise: to treat all people equally, the op-ed reads. Yet, that doesnt happen for many of the 450,000 Americans who sit in jail today awaiting trial because they cannot afford to pay bail.

The Senators argue that an accuseds jail time is often determined by their economic status or available connections.

Whether someone stays in jail or not is far too often determined by wealth or social connections, even though just a few days behind bars can cost people their job, home, custody of their children or their life.

Harris and Paul argue that bail reform could potentially save American taxpayers roughly $78 billion a year.

Politifact analyzed Harris figures and other reports and found her statistics to be correct.

We interpreted Harriss claim about per inmate expenses to mean the operational costs to house male and female inmates, including security, health care, facility upkeep and employee compensation, Politifact said. Advocates for criminal justice reform often argue that just looking at the operational costs of running prisons ignores the social costs of incarcerating Americans.

We looked at those costs as well, but based our rating primarily on the evidence supporting the numbers Harris cited in her Women Unshackled appearance.

RELATED:Congress can get rid of a lot of unconstitutional mass surveillance by doing nothing at all

A Vera Institute report examined the cost to house inmates at prisons nationwide. Data from 45 states found the total cost per inmate to be approximately $33,274 a year.

Additionally, a June 2017 article by the Associated Press estimates that it costs the state of California $75,560 per fiscal year to house an inmate. This number comes from funds Governor Jerry Brown set aside in the 2017 budget Californias Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Sen. Kamala Harris recently claimed it costs us about $33,000 a year (nationally) to lock somebody up In California it costs about $75,000 a year. A recent study that examined costs in 45 states plus data from Californias departments of corrections and finance support the senators statement. The evidence supports the figures she cited. We rate Harris claim True, Politifact concluded.

Link:
Fiscal conservatives should support Rand Paul and Kamala Harris' bail reform bill - Rare.us

Tyler Eschberger | Daily News Sen. Rand Paul at Middlesboro ARH for a roundtable discussion concerning important healthcare issues.

Middlesboro ARH welcomed Sen. Rand Paul to a roundtable discussion concerning ways to improve and implement healthcare needs of the hospital and Bell County.

Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives (FACHE) Community CEO Michael Slusher introduced Paul to the room of various physicians and hospital personnel and opened the floor for discussion on different market forces the hospital has found challenging.

MARH Chief Regulatory Affairs Officer Vicki Thompson was the first to address Paul regarding the patient population of the area.

Bell County ranks 115 out of 120 counties representing the overall health condition. Theres a lot of reasons for that. We have a higher rate of obesity, smokers. 38 percent of our counties lives below the poverty line; 52 percent of that being our children. And that is very distressing to all of us, she said.

Another problem we face here in Bell Countyour opioid crisis. We at one point from 2012 and 2015 were the second-ranked county for the worst overdose and overdose deaths here in Kentucky with heroin and narcotics being the main culprits.

Discussion of the shift from opioid addiction to heroin addiction was raised, with Paul asking if the medical community shared some guilt with having too many people on opioids to begin with.

Slusher stated that he didnt feel guilt was the right term, citing the pain is the fifth vital sign push as part of the problem with opioids.

Pharmacist Steve Weaver stated that the hospital is now using the drug Naloxone as a way to treat opioid dependence and overdose. The drug is prescription free. A protocol has been developed for dispensing Naloxone, he said. First responders, school workers and concerned family members are all able to receive the product with the proper education on the subject.

I think the drug company shares some blame in this too for saying Oxycontin is no big deal and its not really addictive and this a great drug for your patients, they wont get addicted to it. That may have been a lie, said Rand.

Paul went on to say that the spread of opioids was more rapid in areas of high Medicaid and high disability.

Disability you can understand, theyre taking medication for painin most of the counties that have expanded Medicaid they have a worse problem now because, again, more legal opioids because its free. We do need to think through what we can do to make it better, said Paul.

Reach Tyler Eschberger at 606-248-1010, ext. 1126 or on Twitter @TylerEsch89.

Tyler Eschberger | Daily News Sen. Rand Paul at Middlesboro ARH for a roundtable discussion concerning important healthcare issues.

http://www.harlandaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/web1_rand.jpgTyler Eschberger | Daily News Sen. Rand Paul at Middlesboro ARH for a roundtable discussion concerning important healthcare issues.

Discusses opioid issues

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Paul visits Middlesboro ARH - The Harlan Daily Enterprise

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is known for his support of free market principles, but that apparently changes entirely when it comes to bail. He is championing legislation alongside Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) that would use federal grants to effectively destroy the bail bonds industry, putting thousands of small businessmen at risk of losing their livelihoods. Our justice system was designed with a promise: to treat all people equally, Harris was quoted as saying in a news release. Yet more than 450,000 Americans sit in jail today awaiting trial and many of them cannot afford money bail. In our country, whether you stay in jail or not is wholly determined by whether youre wealthy or not and thats wrong.

Harris and Paul published a joint op/ed in the New York Times where the lawmakers referenced the policies of New Jersey as an example of what their proposed federal grant money would influence states into adopting. New Jersey has become a stunning example of the unintended consequences of government solutions to the supposed bail problem.

NBC New York conducted an early expose of what happened after New Jersey effectively dismantled the bail bonds system in their state. What they found was a tremendous lack of accountability, increased government control and spending, and the empowering of criminals to commit more offenses. From the report:

On January 1 of this year, New Jersey overhauled its criminal justice system and virtually eliminated the old cash bail structure, replacing it with one that relies heavily on a mathematical risk assessment formula

From January 1 through March 31, 10,193 eligible defendants were processed. Preventive detention was ordered for only 12.4%. Nearly 85% were given pretrial release, some with conditions

Outraged mother June Rodgers of Millville blames bail reform for the murder of her son. He was shot to death on a street in Vineland in April after a verbal dispute with a man driving a car. Cops arrested career criminal Jules Black, whod been picked up on a separate gun charge four days before, and released with no bail

The state has created a Division of Pretrial Services to monitor defendants. The funds come from court fees. There have been 173 employees hired so far. The projected spending for next fiscal year is expected to be in the range of $36 million to $38 million dollars.

The Office of Administrative Courts was unable to provide any statistics on the number of released defendants who have re-offended since January 1, or the number of those who have failed to appear for scheduled court dates.

Under Pauls proposal, $10 million in federal grant money would be earmarked toward coercing states across the country to adopt these policies. Matt Maddock, a conservative activist and bail bondsman from Michigan, has lobbied on behalf of his industry for many years. He believes that Pauls plan is misguided and unbecoming of the tea party values that got him elected to the Senate in 2010.

Outlawing bail bond agencies and eliminating money bail is not the solution to the problem of the criminally accused from languishing in jail unable to post bail, Maddock said. User-funded bail bond agencies are the only mechanism that effectively reduce the number of fugitives in our communities because they have skin in the game, and they go out and bring fugitives back into custody.

The streets may not be safer, government may not be limited, and small businessmen may have to worry about their livelihood, but at least Paul will have a decent photo-op with a Democrat and series of media appearances to boost his political aspirations. The legislation is not expected to pass.

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Rand Paul Abandons Market Principles In His Attempt To Nationalize Bail Bonds - The Liberty Conservative

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul had an interesting article in The Hill last week about an easy way to make health insurance more affordable -- and better.

"What if I told you that much of what was attempted through ObamaCare could actually happen if the government could go the opposite direction and get more out of the way in the area of health insurance?" he asked.

"If you have insurance through a large employer, say, Toyota or General Motors, certain things are true," Paul wrote. "You don't have to worry about preexisting conditions, because the large group plans don't stop you from joining. You have better coverage at better prices -- because you have the power of tens of thousands of people banding together to drive down prices."

"Competition is key to health reform," he wrote.

Paul said, "It is very clear the original language of the law allows for far more wide-reaching groups than the Department of Labor's bureaucratic rules permit today. The Department of Labor should revise its rules to allow virtually any group to become a group for insurance purposes."

He added, "From the chamber of commerce to the credit unions, from the NRA to the ACLU, from the Realtors to the restaurant association, there are many groups who could almost immediately begin to offer insurance to their members."

And Paul wrote, "As a physician, I can tell you this: Insurance was bad before ObamaCare. Why? Because the power was too often on the side of Big Insurance. I want to turn that on its head as we debate repeal."

It all sounds great -- if it would actually work.

But then, I thought, what is the largest association in the country?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 325 million of us last week -- and counting.

So, instead of a bunch of smaller associations, why don't we just form one for the whole country?

I think you're onto something, Senator.

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Will Rand Paul's insurance idea work? - messenger-inquirer