JOE SCARBOROUGH (CO-HOST): Rand, I'm going to throw you a softball question since the president's being so mean to you. But you actually I think could do Republicans a service here. One of the complaints, chief complaints I've heard from Republicans and conservatives since this entire health care debate has begun, is when we flash up headlines where the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] says 32 million people will lose their health care coverage if there's just a repeal, can you explain why that description concerns conservatives who don't believe that's actually an accurate description, it's more choice than just dumping 32 million people off the rolls?
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Trying to predict the future is a very uncertain sort of guessing game. And I think in the past, the CBO tried to guess how many people would get health insurance through Obamacare and they were wildly off to the tune of millions off. Now they've said like 32, 23, various permutations of millions of people will lose it. But interestingly, one of the big premises of why people lose it is they say, “If you no longer have the individual mandate, if you don't have to pay a tax to buy your insurance, if you're sort of not bullied by government, that 15 million people wouldn't buy insurance for that one fact.” Maybe. It's complete guesswork, and so the thing is is that I think we can put too much stock in guesswork, and to me it's modeling and future predictions. It's like astrology, a lot of guesswork goes involved into it.
NICK CONFESSORE: Senator, it's Nick Confessore here in New York. Just a question for you, just to pull back a little bit, I wonder if you think that the Republican Party has made a grave error in getting into the business of promising to expand coverage. This was not always part of the conservative Bible.
