House Speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday that House Republicans’ proposal to replace Obamacare was something conservatives had “been dreaming about doing.”
In a press conference with House Republican leadership at the Republican National Committee’s headquarters, Ryan described the American Health Care Act as “a conservative wish list.”
“Look at what this bill does,” he says. “It repeals Obamacare’s taxes. That’s a trillion dollars in tax relief for families that will help them with the cost of health care. It repeals Obamacare spending: Medicaid expansion and the Obamacare subsidies. It repeals the Obamacare mandates on individuals and businesses. Ends the funding for Planned Parenthood and sends that money to community health centers, which there are more of. It has a Medicaid per capita block grant. That’s the biggest entitlement reform anyone here has seen. It nearly doubles the amount of money people can put into health savings accounts.”
Ryan described one aspect of the proposal, providing tax benefits to those who purchase insurance individually versus those who receive it through their job, as “the crown jewel of conservative health care reform.”
“It equalizes the tax treatment of health care. Tax credits for health insurance is something that we as health care conservative reformers have been working on for years,” he said. “This has been the crown jewel of conservative health care reform, to equalize the tax treatment of health care so we can have a vibrant individual market to have a free market in health care.”
Ryan added later, after saying the House plan would “get Washington out of the business of being a nanny state”: “This is monumental, exciting, conservative reform that fixes these problems. This is something that people – I’ve been working on this for 20 years. This is exciting. This is what we’ve been dreaming about doing, and we know it’s going to make a positive difference in people’s lives in this country.”
