The intra-party war among Republicans is in full swing over whether to repeal and replace Obamacare or to simply trim the edges.
And now Speaker Paul Ryan is gunning for fellow Republicans who refuse to get onboard with Obamacare-lite.
But in a surprise announcement today, the White House signaled support despite calling for full repeal.
Here’s more from Breitbart…
House Speaker Paul Ryan is openly targeting House Republicans with television advertisements—while conspicuously not hitting Democratic members—to try to browbeat them into supporting his healthcare legislation.
The remarkable development, in which a GOP leadership-connected organization is now opening fire on the airwaves against Ryan’s own members, is ultimately one of the main tactics employed by Ryan’s predecessor, former House Speaker John Boehner—one that was instrumental in forcing his resignation in 2015.
And while this is going on, with Ryan unrelentingly pushing for this American Health Care Act—nicknamed by many Republicans who oppose it “Ryancare,” “Obamacare 2.0,” or “Obamacare Lite”—members in the House GOP conference are beginning to whisper about replacing not just Obamacare but replacing Ryan as Speaker.
“A group with close ties to House Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), is airing a half-million dollars’ worth of television ads in more than two dozen media markets urging unruly conservatives to support GOP health-care legislation,” the Washington Post’s Mike DeBonis reported on Thursday.
Particularly, the group American Action Network—a group the Post notes is “affiliated with” Ryan’s Congressional Leadership Fund Super PAC—“is targeting 30 members it says are part of the House Freedom Caucus,” DeBonis writes.
“The Republicans’ American Health Care Act versus Obamacare,” a narrator says in the Ryan-connected ads. “Obamacare is full of job-destroying mandates. The new plan eliminates them. Obamacare put bureaucrats in control. The Republican plan puts patients and doctors in charge. Obamacare stuck families with soaring premiums. The new plan provides more choices and lower costs.”
Most of those claims are untrue. The Ryan bill does not eliminate Obamacare’s individual mandate, the highly controversial part of Obamacare that forced all Americans to buy a health insurance plan even if they did not want one or face a tax penalty collected by the IRS. Ryan’s bill still forces all Americans to buy healthcare, but gives the penalty collected for not doing so to insurance companies.
The bureaucrats versus patients and doctors claim can also be challenged, given that the AARP and the American Medical Association both oppose the bill, while the bureaucrat-connected Washington establishment organization the U.S. Chamber of Commerce backs Ryan’s plan.
And the claim this bill cuts costs doesn’t hold muster either, as everyone from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to the House Freedom Caucus to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) are concerned Ryan’s bill actually does the reverse.
The ad then cuts to President Trump’s recent address to a joint session of Congress, where Trump says he wants to “repeal and replace Obamacare.”
