Ryan Calls GOP Health Care Plan 'What We've Been Dreaming About Doing'

[DonViejo]

Source: Talking Points Memo



By MATT SHUHAM Published MARCH 8, 2017, 11:00 AM EDT

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."

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ryan-gop-health-plan-press-conference

[samnsara]

1. any bets that big book he held up was full of blank pages?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. I hope Paul Ryan fries in Hell if this is his dream.

Tax credits for health insurance are useless for the people who need it the most. If you're too poor to pay federal tax, what good are tax credits? His "vibrant individual market" for "a free market in health care" benefits nobody but the insurance companies. God, I hate that guy.

[subterranean]

8. You would still get the tax credits even if you don't make enough to pay taxes.

You're thinking of tax deductions, which only reduce your taxable income and are useless if you already owe no taxes or don't itemize. A tax credit, on the other hand, is an amount that you receive regardless of your tax situation.

The problem with the Republican plan is that unlike Obamacare, the tax credits are not pegged to income, so someone who makes $25,000 a year would get the same amount as someone who makes $70,000 a year.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. I understand that, and I'm not thinking of deductions.

A deduction is a reduction in your taxable income; if your taxable income is already less than $10,000.00, you don't owe any federal tax anyhow, so another $2,000 deduction, reducing their taxable income to $8,000, is useless. Likewise, a $2,000 credit is useless to someone who owes no taxes in the first place. My point is that giving a tax credit to the very poor does not help them. Even for someone who makes enough money to pay some amount of tax, they are living paycheck to paycheck, and having to wait a year to get their tax refund won't get those monthly premiums paid (or their car payments, etc.).

[subterranean]

17. It depends on whether the credit is refundable or non-refundable.

Someone who owes no taxes can still get a refundable tax credit. But I agree with you that the GOP plan is woefully inadequate, and wouldn't be enough to make any decent insurance affordable for many people.

[Hortensis]

22. What makes one think "decent" insurance would

be available even to the 59% who still get their insurance through work? Less taxpayer funding invested in national insurance means less coverage. No matter what they say now.

[subterranean]

27. I agree, it affects everybody one way or another.

[stopbush]

28. How do you not owe fed tax if your taxable (adjusted gross) income is under $10k?

Last I looked, there's a 10% fed rate on individuals on $0-9275. If your adjusted income is $8000, you owe $800.

[NewJeffCT]

3. The dream "screw everybody but the wealthiest"?

I assume is what he means?

[Wounded Bear]

4. We've been dreaming about it, too Paulie...

except that we think of it as a nightmare. I guess that is why you've been having wet dreams about it.

[Merlot]

5. "...a free market in health care."

Think about what that means. Profit on healtcare.

[Blackjackdavey]

15. The ACA was quite good for the bottom line.

Similar to climate/clean energy initiatives, this is where the Republicans are exposed as frauds with respect to the free market (like everything else they say.) The ACA is very good for jobs. In normal states, it has spawned a whole new sector of preventative medicine/mental health care designed to reduce health care costs while increasing access to care. If it is repealed, people will lose jobs. We are not talking enough about this. It is only a negative with respect to large, public companies, I.E. stock market profits. Preventative care is more work intensive and less profitable. IOW, it benefits the middle class on down -- which as we know is truly what Republicans are against.

[cloudbase]

6. Their wet dream.

Sad.

[yallerdawg]

7. Sticking your thumb "in that black man's eye."

That's a pretty sick dream - but shared by an astonishing number of people, in particular the jackass in the White House.

It is now very clear - we are going to have to figure out "how to fix stupid" or we are all going to die.

[Aristus]

9. I'll bet you have, you fucknozzle...

[Marthe48]

10. Ryan is a pitiless psycho

Why don't any of these low-life beggars do the work they were elected for? Unless they get caught, they have it made for life. And yet, thrill at taking away or denying anything that will 'promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.'

Just like Bush-they think the Constitution of the United States of America is a "GD piece of paper".

The big question: Are you Republican? Or American? There is only one right answer.

[asiliveandbreathe]

11. So christian of him and every congress person who agrees with

this robbing and pillaging of our countrymen and women...we just need to sit back and watch/..don't think so -


As many of us here, we were taught to love and embrace our fellowman and woman..from early childhood. We do have a moral compass, for those of us with something to share, we share, for those of us who have something to give, we give...religious, or not, nature or nurture, we just know what's right..I really don't care what god you look to..or whether you do or don't..we don't preach or wear it on our sleeve...we just act....

I can't help but think about the most detestable behaviors we are witness to...haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers -

sound familiar? RESIST..

[Vinca]

12. This is a 2-fer for the GOP. They get rid of healthcare and kill off the poor people, too.

[haele]

13. Bet he also dreams of his stock in funeral homes rising.

Because he certainly dumped his hospital and nursing home stocks before he signed off on this. If he thought the ACA messed with health care provider reimbursement, health care providers for the lower incomes are doubly screwed by this bill.

Community Health Centers? They're currently overwhelmed. Especially rural or small town Health/Medical Centers - according to my SIL, who lives in a small town where the nearest full hospital is over 90 miles away and there are two (!) community health centers in the district along with the Planned Parenthood center/evangelical prayer circle - the OB/GYN where she gets her care doubles as the Pediatricians and stands in for the two Internal Medicine doctors, because he doesn't see enough patients on a regular basis for the to maintain a dedicated OB/GYN office.
Just as the Oncologist and Rheumatologist there also double as the only two Geriatric Medicine doctors available to public access medical care outside the full hospital.
Sure, there are "long-term care hospitals" private practices, and nursing homes available in many of these areas, but these medical facilities are not accessible to most people under a certain income level unless those patients are subsidized by either by the government or by a "Cadillac" health care insurance plan.

Planned Parenthood took a lot of the strain off Community Health Centers by specializing in reproductive care and providing volume OB/GYN and other outpatient family planning/sexual health services. Get rid of Planned Parenthood, and that Community Health Care center still can't afford to get another OB/GYN to handle what PP used to do for the community.

Reducing Medicaid to a block grant instead as an individual subsidy to provide health care means that even less money goes to support patient health care, and instead gets diverted to the "structure" of health care provision - which needs funding, true, but...
...putting a needed MRI machine in a state-subsidized Medical Center for Medicaid and other state or federally subsidized patients is good - but if half the patients can no longer get the Medicaid or subsidy that allows them to afford to come in when they are hurting and see the doctor to get referred for an MRI in the first place, that MRI machine that was needed is going unused and basically is a waste of the now reduced Medicaid dollars.

It's sort of like tax credits to businesses - a tax credit looks really good on the books, and can help the business when it needs to expand - but getting a tax credit doesn't mean the business is going to provide more services or products and hire more people if the customers aren't there to drive the expansion. A tax credit just allows a failing business with no customers to stay afloat just a bit longer.
Likewise, a Medicaid block grant administered by a State does not increase the number of people who currently can't afford the monthly market prices of health insurance to be eligible for a Medicaid subsidy to (help) pay for health insurance, it means the State gets to decide where and how much of a defined amount of Federal funding for Medicaid services - either as funding for a patient, a provider or for a medical service - is going to go. And if the state, for any reason (well meaning or corrupt), doesn't get the numbers correct when they plan the funding, a lot of people will become worse off than they were before the ACA.

Haele

[Kimchijeon]

16. what an evil piece of shit you are Ryan

"we dream of the bottom 90 PERCENT of american tax bracket being punished! Die you peasants! Muahhahah"

If he had a mustache he'd be twirling it.

[lark]

18. So, killing the poor gives Repugs a hard on?

Not surprised one bit, they are just that venal and greedy. They want all the $ for the rich, & the working class to be their slaves. Women won't be allowed to get effective contraception and education will no longer be free and public. That way the 1%ers will have lots and lots of ignorant young slaves who will die quickly once they get sick or injured because they will have no ability to obtain health care.

[area51]

19. Translation of what Paul Ryan meant:

“House Speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday that House Republicans’ proposal to kill Americans was something conservatives 'had been dreaming about doing'.”

[Grins]

20. "....something conservatives had been dreaming about...."

"...something conservatives had “been dreaming about doing.”

Word to conservatives: See your doctor if you experience an erection lasting four hours or longer.

[Skittles]

21. that's why everyone despises it, you sociopathic asshole

seriously Paul Ryan, FUCK YOU

your days of fucking the American people WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES are *OVER*

[sofa king]

23. Shortening the lives of 20-140 million Americans?

Yep, that's their dream. I'm sure their solution to Obamacare will be "final."

[sarcasmo]

24. Guess Paul has wet dreams about tax cuts for the wealthy.

[Solly Mack]

25. Too bad his parents didn't abort him.

[bagelsforbreakfast]

26. They should call it the Ryan-Mengele Act n/m

[montana_hazeleyes]

33. Perfect!

[YOHABLO]

29. Yeah, just what Ayn Rand ordered. huh? They can call it ''Ayn Ryan Care''. LOL (?)

[Cognitive_Resonance]

30. They give themselves away. They are ideologically obsessed disciples of Ayn Rand hell-bent on

undermining and destroying every public institution within their reach. The political equivalent of vandals.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

31. I dream of........well, I won't share what I dream about

but taking away people's healthcare isn't something has never been a subject of any of my dreams, at least so far.

[SHRED]

32. GOP has screwed the pooch with this turd

And they don't even realize it.

[Blue Idaho]

34. Then he really is

The mean little cocksucker we all thought he was...