CBO Just Said Trumpcare Will Strip Coverage from 24 Million. Paul Ryan’s Response is Disgusting
Today, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released it’s estimate of Trumpcare’s impact: 24 million Americans are expected to lose their health coverage. While the White House “strenuously” disputes the assessment, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan doesn’t care.
“Well, gosh, not as many people will get coverage,” Ryan said. At least he didn’t add “boo hoo.”
Speaker Ryan and the rest of the Republican Party who support the GOP health care repeal have abandoned President Trump’s promises of “insurance for everybody” and that “no one” will lose coverage under their “terrific” new plan. With virtually every estimate predicting widespread loss of care (along with massive rate hikes) from the GOP health care repeal, Trump’s cronies have given up defending the plan’s paltry health care coverage and are now trying to tell us it doesn’t matter.
Ryan went later tweeted that the CBO estimate was a victory, ignoring the coverage loss altogether.
This is the corner Republicans have painted themselves into. After eight years of claiming Obamacare is the worst American innovation since slavery (or worse, to some) and a campaign in which Trump and company swore no one would lose insurance, the GOP had to abandon one of its two lies. Either admit that Obamacare is not the villain they claimed and spare American families, or stand by their original falsehoods and try to rob people of their health care.
True to form, Congressional Republicans chose their career prospects over their constituents and are now determined to strip coverage from 24 million people. But how to defend a plan that is so transparently destructive? Tell people it doesn’t matter, of course.
If successful, this would go down as one of the greatest sleight of hands in history. Obamacare set out with the relatively modest goal of making affordable health care accessible for every American. Trumpcare is now trying to convince people they never needed health care in the first place.
