Rep. Brian Babin, Republican of Texas, joined the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” program on Friday to discuss unsuccessful Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Babin was particularly upset with the ACA’s requirement that insurance plans cover maternity care and addiction treatment, complaining that the law requires families who are “law-abiding” and “make wise decisions” to have coverage that they “probably would not have to have.”

Babin claimed that most Americans were against the Affordable Care Act at the time it was passed and that they want to “get rid of this thing” now that “we’ve had a taste of socialized medicine.”

“So, failure’s not an option,” he said. “I think my colleagues in the Senate need to get together, and let’s get something that we can offer the American people to give them freedom and choice. And why should a 25- or 30-year-old man have to have maternity insurance? Why should every policy have a drug rehab clause in it, coverage in it? These are just the government-knows-best insurance regs that make the prices go up. So we’ve got to give them some choices here.”



Later in the interview, Babin said that the ACA requires insurance plans to cover things that people don’t need if they’re “law abiding and they make wise decisions.”

“You know,” he said, “if you’ve got a government that’s going to force you to buy a private product like health insurance and then make you—and this product, they tell you exactly what coverage you’ve got to have, it covers all these things that most families, if they’re law-abiding and they make wise decisions, that you probably would not have to have, then I think the price is going to come down.”

Babin added that if the ACA’s individual mandate is repealed, “a lot of folks” will probably go without insurance. “But whose choice is this?” he asked. “This is America, this is not the Soviet Union.”