Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has never been shy about his differences with President Donald Trump.
The two politicians share a political party, but have been at public loggerheads repeatedly since Paul was one of Trump’s many rivals for the Republican presidential nomination a decade ago.
But now, Paul has floated a plan for the two to team up to rein in the country’s health care crisis — and Trump appears at least open to the idea.
On Tuesday, Trump used the Truth Social social media platform to publicize a personal message from Paul seeking the president’s help in establishing a new system that would let Americans buy health insurance through associations outside of their employment and across state lines.
Donald J. Trump Truth Social Post 12:51 PM EST 12/02/25 pic.twitter.com/SvWqAl6Cdu
— Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) December 3, 2025
During his first term in the White House, Trump signed an executive order prioritizing so-called “association health plans.”
The order bogged down in court challenges, Paul wrote, but congressional action could be a way out for a country saddled with the legacy of the “Obamacare” system inflicted on it by a Democratic Congress and President Barack Obama back in 2010.
It was Democrats’ attempts to guarantee expanded Obamacare subsidies that led to the government shutdown in October and mid-November.
In a piece published Tuesday by Newsweek, Paul pointed out that subsidies are no solution:
“As conservatives, including myself, warned in the debate over Obamacare, subsidizing insurance simply increases demand and therefore increases the price of health insurance,” he wrote.
He’s planning to introduce a bill, the “Health Marketplace and Savings Accounts For All Act” that would incorporate the kind of associations envisioned in Trump’s executive order from 2017.
“My plan would make it legal for Costco, Sam’s Club, or Amazon to bargain for their millions of members as a single entity, thereby driving prices down. These collectives could be bigger than any corporation in America and have the size and leverage to drive health premiums down. In fact, once these co-ops are legalized, the individual market likely melts away, and everyone in America would gain the benefits that normally accrue to the group market,” Paul wrote.
In the text message Trump publicized on social media, Paul wrote that his plan “costs nothing and simply changes labor law to allow people to buy insurance as a group from retailers.”
“Let me know if this is something you might want to partner on.”
The fact that Trump posted the message without comment signals that he’s at least entertaining the idea of working with Paul, which would be step forward in the men’s political relationship.
“I know we’ve been at odds recently,” Paul wrote in at the start of his message. That was putting it mildly.
In June, when Paul stood against Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” the president attacked the senator repeatedly, including claiming at one point that “The people of Kentucky can’t stand him.”
In the spring, the two clashed again over Trump’s plans for tariffs (Paul opposes them).
But political alliances in a healthy democracy depend more on issues than on personalities, and few issues are more perennially important in American politics than health care and health insurance.
As one Truth Social user put it, commenting on Trump’s post:
“Rand Paul is sounding like he wants to run with the football. This is out of the ordinary for Rand as he is usually playing defense, but his proposal is an option, an avenue to use in breaking off from Obamacare which is a disaster.”
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