House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Wednesday said that House Republicans worked with President Donald Trump to write their Obamacare repeal bill, which has come under fire from Republicans and Democrats alike.
“This is something we wrote with President Trump. This is something we wrote with the Senate committees,” Ryan said on Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria.”
He said that Republicans are making “improvements and refinements” to the bill but plan to keep its “major components” intact.
“We’re going through the process here, we feel very good where we are,” Ryan said. “This is the plan we ran on all of last year.”
During his transition, Trump promised to replace Obamacare with a plan that would provide “insurance for everybody.”
In a report released Monday, however, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 24 million people would lose their insurance over the next 10 years under the repeal bill.
Ryan said the CBO’s report “validated” the bill, citing the office’s estimate that the legislation would save the government $6 billion and reduce the federal deficit by $337 billion over the next 10 years.
“I’m pretty encouraged by it and it actually exceeded my expectations,” Ryan said on Monday. “We’re extremely excited about this and I’m really actually frankly encouraged.”
