House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has cultivated the notion of being the closest thing the new Republican Party has to a deep thinker, once again proves unable to answer the most basic questions as to how his own repeal of the Affordable Care Act will affect the ability of Americans to get healthcare.
Asked in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” approximately how many people will lose coverage if the American Health Care Act is passed, Ryan replied: “I can’t answer that question. It’s up to people.”
Which people? All the people. What he means is that after Republicans slash subsidies to every American except the rich ones, many people will find themselves unable to pay for that insurance, will therefore lose it, and will go without healthcare. Paul Ryan considers this "freedom", because Paul Ryan is at best an idiot and at worst a sociopath. The idiot interpretation presumes he is serious in his analysis, and the sociopath interpretation presumes he is lying.
“Here’s the premise of your question. Are you going to stop mandating people buy health insurance,” Ryan said. “People are going to do what they want to do with their lives because we believe in individual freedom in this country.”
If a not-quite-retired American making $15,000 a year has to shell out $8,000 of that to purchase Paul Ryan's new version of "insurance", Paul Ryan seems to think that whether or not they are able to come up with the money is a "choice" on their part. Why do they simply go without food for eight months of the year? Why don't they simply draw off their trust fund?
Ryan's entire schtick continues to revolve around the notion that there is a great wide swath of Americans who do not want health insurance and find the very notion of purchasing it to be the highest form of oppression. It does not entire his mind, at least not according to him, that there are millions of people in America who simply could not afford that insurance, whether they wanted it or not, before healthcare reform who will again be unable to afford it if Paul Ryan undoes those reforms. And he is the wonk of the party, the one who has supposedly devoted these last years to sussing these things out.
He's committed to the bit, though. He absolutely refuses to entertain the notion that people will be losing healthcare because he took it from them, rather than because freedom.
“The one thing I’m certain will happen is CBO will say, ‘Well, gosh. Not as many people will get coverage,’” he said. “You know why? Because this isn’t a government mandate. This is not the government that makes you buy what we say you should buy and therefore the government thinks you’re all going to buy it.”
Idiot, or sociopath? We should be generous. The man has never given evidence of being anything but an idiot; we should take him at face value.