Much of the Senate's new healthcare bill will be negotiated in the conference committee, as the chamber's rules have left a situation in which the Senate will have difficulty working the bill out, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said Friday.
"I am hoping it works out," Franks told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "Obamacare is completely disintegrating all over the country. Now, of course, it's falling on Republicans with them to find something better.
"We are trying to deal with an almost infinite need for finite resources, and if we don't bring innovation and market forces to bear, we can't solve the equation."
There are several binary choices at play, Franks continued, but ultimately he wants to do the right thing for Americans.
"Everything in my observation in the last 50 years is that simply throwing a socialist government approach nearly always makes it worse," Franks said. "We tried that with the telephone system, and it was a disaster. When we deregulated it and put it back to private sector, you have homeless people carry cell phones now."
He said he hopes the legislation will eventually allow states and the private sector to have what they need to be competitive and innovative, while creating opportunities to drive down costs and retain patients' dignity.
Franks said at this time he is not sure he can vote for the legislation, but he wants to be able to. But at the same time, he said, the Senate has to do something about being "constrained by artificial, weird rules. It's a stupid debate and most people don't understand. I hope somehow we can overcome that."
He also said the description from four opposing senators of the bill being more like an amendment to Obamacare is "highly accurate."
"The challenge is if we can do something better than that," Franks said. "There's no one who was more committed to doing something better than that than I am, but we have to deal with the Senate rules, and I understand that I have become a broken record on that front, but it's because it's one of the most significant impediments to us doing anything significant."
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