Listen to Speaker Ryan’s Interview with Bill Bennett

Listen to Speaker Ryan's Podcast Interview with Bill Bennett

March 11, 2017

Speaker Ryan Press Office

Summary: This week, Speaker Ryan appeared on The Bill Bennett Show to discuss Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. He explained how the American Health Care Act is part of a three-pronged approach to achieve real, conservative health care reform.

A Three-Pronged Approach "We have broken this process into three phases.

"This first bill, phase number one, which we cannot have a filibuster on, they can't filibuster, it's called reconciliation. That basically repeals all the fiscal pieces to Obamacare, which effectively repeals Obamacare. The taxes, the mandates, the subsidies. And it puts Republican tax policy in its place--health savings accounts, high risk pools, tax credits for people who don't get health care at their job to go buy a health care plan of their choosing. It also allows the states to go back into regulating health care instead of the federal government. So we give freedom to people to buy whatever they want to buy--a radical departure from Obamacare.

"Phase two: Tom Price has so much discretion, because that's what Obamacare did, it gave a lot of power to the secretary of HHS. He is going to use that discretion to further deregulate the market so that people can have the plan of their choice.

"Phase three are the bills we really like, that we want to pass, but can be filibustered in the Senate. It's the things I just mentioned. It's let people bulk buy their health insurance in nationwide buying pools. Interstate shopping across state lines. Medical liability reform. Things like getting rid of the IPAB. Things like that they can filibuster. We're going to pass it in the House, send it to the Senate, and just go fight for it over there."

Obamacare Is Collapsing http://speaker.us13.list-manage.com/track/click'u=5fb4099c8dedbe8a58e18dffb&id=1fe08f2b45&e=3a17aa0295 "They [the Left] want single-payer health care. They want government to mandate what you must buy. They want the government to say 'Here is your insurance plan, buy it, and we'll help you pay for it'. That is an amazingly explosive entitlement. It actually isn't working. It is death spiraling. It is collapsing. So even the scheme that they put together is collapsing. The insurers are telling us next year the premium increases will be even more than this year, and you'll have even more pullouts. Only five states have one insurer left. A third of all counties in America have one insurer left. They're leaving the market because the architecture of Obamacare is collapsing, it's crashing. So this is really a mercy mission for the country, which is stepping in front, finishing the law off, and replacing it with patient-centered, Republican-based health care reform that we've been dreaming about for years is what we're doing."

Working In Sync With the White House http://speaker.us13.list-manage1.com/track/click'u=5fb4099c8dedbe8a58e18dffb&id=d9568265d1&e=3a17aa0295 "This bill we're working hand-in-glove on with the president, the vice president, Tom Price, Mick Mulvaney, the budget director--all working together on the same page, the House Republicans, the Senate Republicans, the White House. We literally have been working off the same piece of paper, the same bill, for months now, and the president is full onto this, because what is this" It's him keeping his promise to repeal and replace this law. Getting rid of all the fiscal pieces of this law effectively repeals this law. And replacing it with a better system is exactly what we are doing. So it really is a fulfillment of the promises we've been making."

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