Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) was asked a simple question on ABC’s This Week. Ryan was asked if he would guarantee that people would be better off under the Republican health care bill. His response was to never answer the question.
Video:
Transcript via ABC’s This Week:
STEPHANOPUOLOS: Let’s bring this now to the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Mr. Speaker, thank you for joining us this morning. A lot to talk about here this morning.
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I just want to start out with a big, bottom line question. You just heard Dr. Gawande there. He said that this is going to make health care worse off on almost every level. Can you guarantee based — if the House bill were to become law — that no Americans would be worse off than they are today?
REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I fundamentally disagree with his analysis on so many levels, George.
But, first of all, good morning. It’s good to be with you. Second of all, let’s remember what is happening right now. Obamacare is collapsing. Obamacare isn’t not working. What good is Obamacare for anybody, let alone for a person with preexisting conditions if you don’t have a health insurance plan that you can even get.
So this is a rescue mission to make sure that we can achieve the goals we all want, which is getting the cost of coverage down and making sure that everyone has access to affordable health care, especially and including people with pre-existing conditions. That is what our bill does.
So let me just say a couple of things. You have got all of these health insurers. If they were doing so well, why would they be pulling out of the marketplace? Over 1,000 counties, one in three counties in America have one plan to choose from.
Just this week in Iowa, their last statewide insurer said that they are going to have to pull out. So that means people in 94 of Iowa’s 99 counties will have zero choices. Aetna just pulled out of Virginia. The law is collapsing. It’s not working.
You can’t get health insurance in these places, whether you have a pre-existing condition or not. And so what we’re trying to do here, George, is step in front of this collapsing law and make sure that we can have a system that works, a system with choice and competition and affordable premiums.
And we have multiple layers of protections for people with pre-existing conditions. So…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, let’s talk about that, first.
RYAN: … they, too, can have the peace of mind — so they, too, can have the peace of mind to get affordable coverage.
Ryan’s dodging of the question was an answer. Republicans know that people aren’t going to be better off under Trumpcare than they are under Obamacare. Forget guaranteeing anything, Ryan never said that the Republican health care bill would help people. He just kept repeating that people will be able to buy insurance.
The Speaker also didn’t mention that the chaos and uncertainty that Republicans are creating in the health care system is why insurance companies are pulling out. Obamacare isn’t collapsing. Republicans are destroying it.
Ryan knows the truth about the Republican health care bill, and he is hoping that voters don’t find out before they go to the polls in 2018.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
