On Monday, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) announced he is running for president. At 43, he is the youngest candidate in 2016 presidential race so far.
Consistent with the themes and aspirations detailed in his newly released book, "American Dreams," in his announcement Sen. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, cast himself as an embodiment of the future, declaring he is best suited to make the American dream a reality for others, as it was for his own family, according to the New York Times.
"I live in an exceptional country where the son of a bartender and a maid can have the same dreams and the same future as those who come from power and privilege," he said during his announcement.
Here are 10 things to know about Sen. Rubio's views on healthcare.
1. Sen. Rubio wants to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. According to Sen. Rubio's government-official website, he believes the PPACA will "drive up costs, bankrupt the country and create bureaucratic red tape when it comes to everyday healthcare decisions." Sen. Rubio has three main goals regarding the PPACA, including repealing and replacing it, allowing individuals to control their own healthcare choices and returning control of health policy to the states.
In January 2011, Senator Rubio signed his first bill as a co-sponsor of legislation introduced by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) to repeal the PPACA in its entirety. The bill is the same as the legislation to repeal the PPACA that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in February. Sen. Rubio is one of 34 Republicans co-sponsoring the bill.
Despite his stance against the PPACA, Sen. Rubio enrolled his family in one of its health plans in 2013 and accepted the $10,000 federal subsidy other Republicans rejected, according to the Miami Herald. He defended his decision to accept the annual subsidy, saying it is an employer contribution made available to every employee of the federal government.
2. America needs to take "simple, common sense actions" to lower healthcare costs, according to Sen. Rubio. Such actions include "allowing individuals to purchase health insurance across state lines, encouraging small businesses to band together to form Association Health Plans, giving individuals the same tax breaks given to businesses, incentivizing the use of electronic medical records, giving people tools to make cost-conscious decisions, increasing the number of community health centers, incentivizing state medical malpractice reform, enhancing Health Savings Accounts, pursuing medical malpractice reform and adopting a sensible program to cover those with pre-existing conditions," according to his website.
3. Sen. Rubio has a three-part plan for a post-PPACA era. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiff in the King v. Burwell trial challenging the legality of federal subsidies supplied to eligible individuals on HealthCare.gov, Sen. Rubio has a three-part plan to mitigate the collapse of the law.
In an article he authored published by Fox News, Sen. Rubio wrote the first step would be to provide an advanceable, refundable tax credit that every American can use to buy healthcare coverage, with the value of these credits increasing annually. Additionally, the government should set the tax preference for employer-sponsored insurance on a "glide path" to make sure it will equal the level of credits at the end of the decade.
The second step includes reforming insurance regulations to encourage innovation so Americans with pre-existing conditions, as well as those living in high-cost states, have the opportunity to purchase coverage through their state's federally supported high-risk pools and across state lines, according to Fox News.
Third, Sen. Rubio believes Medicare and Medicaid must be set on fiscally sustainable paths to survive. Medicaid should be moved into a per-capita system to preserve funding for its populations while "freeing states from Washington mandates," according to Fox News. Medicare should be transitioned into a premium support system to empower seniors with choice and market competition as in Medicare Advantage and Part D.
4. Sen. Rubio believes taxpayers should never be asked to bail out an insurance company. In April 2014, Sen. Rubio introduced the ObamaCare Taxpayer Bailout Protection Act. The act includes "legislation to hold the administration accountable by ensuring ObamaCare's risk-corridor provision remains budget neutral, which would prevent taxpayer dollars from being used to bailout insurance companies." This act was a follow-up to Sen. Rubio's attempt to protect taxpayers from a PPACA bailout after introducing the ObamaCare Taxpayer Bailout Prevention Act in November 2013.
"From rising healthcare costs to loss of coverage, millions of Americans have already been hurt by ObamaCare. We cannot allow a taxpayer-funded bailout to be the American people's next hardship," Sen. Rubio said in a statement. "The Administration's excessive delays and revisions of ObamaCare cannot transform the law into a success, and taxpayers cannot be expected to foot the bill for Washington’s mistakes when the law fails."
5. There is an urgent need to save Medicare, Sen. Rubio says. In a speech delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in May 2014, Sen. Rubio outlined what he believes are two important truths regarding Medicare: The Medicare program is essential to maintaining a secure, healthy and comfortable retirement for seniors, and if it is not reformed, Medicare will go bankrupt in about 12 years and cease to exist.
According to Sen. Rubio, a comprehensive Medicare reform plan will be characterized by the expansion of healthcare choices for seniors, spurred competition in the marketplace and the extension of solvency of the Medicare trust fund while ensuring traditional Medicare remains a viable option. To achieve this, Sen. Rubio proposes we transition to a premium support system that provides seniors a "generous but fixed" amount of money to buy health insurance, either from Medicare or a private provider.
"By driving competition between private plans and traditional fee-for-service Medicare, we could spur choice while controlling costs," Sen. Rubio said during his speech. "It would also lead to innovations that are specifically focused around the needs of beneficiaries."
6. Sen. Rubio believes abortions should be illegal after 20 weeks of pregnancy. A co-sponsor of the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," introduced in the Senate in late 2014, Sen. Rubio supports the prohibition of abortions after 20 weeks on basis that fetuses can feel pain at the point of development, according to MSNBC. This goes against current Supreme Court precedent, which says abortion cannot be banned until viability.
Sen. Rubio also signed onto an amicus brief in the Hobby Lobby case before the Supreme Court, supporting the company's objections to the PPACA requirement of family-owned corporations to pay for the insurance coverage for contraception. According to MSNBC, the brief repeatedly likens contraception to abortion, especially emergency contraception and the IUD.
7. Sen. Rubio says the Department of Veterans Affairs needs to be held accountable for its various lapses. "We have a long way to go before we can say that we are properly caring for those who have cared for us," Sen. Rubio said during his address to the VA Healthcare Policy Summit in February. "The Department of Veterans Affairs is simply buckling under the weight of its own bureaucracy, slowed to tragic levels of unresponsiveness, and still feeling the effects of scandal."
Last year, Sen. Rubio proposed legislation to increase accountability within the VA by giving the VA secretary the authority to fire workers who "aren't doing their jobs," particularly among the executive leaders, who Sen. Rubio said have fostered a culture of scandal. Congress passed the legislation, though Sen. Rubio noted in his speech that only three executives have been fired, and only one of those was related to the VA scandal.
Sen. Rubio supports reforming the VA system with a premium support model. In this model, the VA would be turned into an independent, government-chartered non-profit corporation, effectively freeing it from bureaucratic and political constraints. Patients would be given more options for their healthcare, including the ability to use their allotted funds with an approved private sector provider. This would mean the VA would have to compete for patients, leading to increased efficiency, service and innovation, according to Sen. Rubio.
8. "All children…should be vaccinated." Sen. Rubio is a strong supporter of child vaccinations.
"Absolutely, all children in America should be vaccinated," Sen. Rubio told NBC News. "Unless their immune [system is] suppressed, obviously, for medical exceptions, but I believe that all children, as is the law in most states in this country, before they can even attend school, have to be vaccinated for a certain panel."
In response to the argument commonly put forth among those against vaccinations, Sen. Rubio said there is no medical or scientific data linking vaccinations to the onset of autism or other disabilities, according to the report.
9. In October 2014, Sen. Rubio introduced an Ebola travel ban legislation. The legislation would have imposed "common sense travel restrictions by creating a temporary ban on new visas for nationals of the countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone," according to a news release. The ban would be effective until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention certified the Ebola outbreak is contained.
In an article he authored published by CNN in October 2014, Sen. Rubio outlines four steps to protecting Americans and those in West Africa from the Ebola outbreak, in addition to the travel ban.
These steps include designating a senior government official to lead a task force for coordinating the U.S. response to the crisis both domestically and internationally; containing the outbreak at its source — Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone; centralizing all future Ebola medical cases in the U.S. at the medical facilities that have successfully treated and cured Ebola patients; and finally, increase efforts to develop an Ebola vaccine and increase the production of antiviral drugs.
10. He supports the use of medical marijuana, but only the noneuphoric type the Florida Legislature approved.
In January, Sen. Rubio told the Tampa Bay Times, "You hear compelling stories of people who say the use of medicinal marijuana provides relief for the thing they are suffering. So I'd like to learn more about that aspect of it, the science of it. I have qualms about that proposal, I really do, but I probably need to learn more about it. The broader issue of whether we should be legalizing it is something I'm pretty firm about. I don’t think legalizing marijuana or even decriminalizing it is the right decision for our country."
Sen. Rubio's opposition of the legalization of medical or recreational marijuana contrasts with Florida's growing support of it, with 88 percent of Florida voters supporting the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes and 55 percent for recreational use, according to a July 2014 poll cited in the report.