The loss of influential Republican Rep. Fred Upton (MI) on Zombie Trumpcare has House Speaker Paul Ryan desperately trying to stem the flow and, as Politico puts it "into full-fledged damage-control mode."
House GOP leaders are desperately trying to change a hardening narrative that sicker Americans would suffer under their plan. Ryan argued to lawmakers in a closed-door GOP conference meeting that people with pre-existing conditions would not be harmed by the latest draft. Vice President Mike Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price will also huddle with lawmakers to try to win votes on Tuesday afternoon.
In total, nearly 20 GOP lawmakers, mostly moderate or centrist Republicans worried about sicker Americans paying more for premiums, have now added their names to the “no” column. At the same time, the list of Republicans who say they’re “undecided” has grown to at least two-dozen. Even several GOP whips tasked with drumming up support for the bill said Monday night they have not yet made up their minds on whether to support the revised American Health Care Act.
Ryan followed that up with this tweet.
That "verified" link goes to … himself. His own fact sheet on Zombie Trumpcare which details all the circumstances under which people with pre-existing conditions can be harmed by the law. Basically if states decide they can be. Pretty much every real healthcare analyst and as pretty much every healthcare industry group, as well as patient groups like the March of Dimes, refute Ryan on this one.
Clearly, Ryan's reputation for lies precedes him with some of the people who know him best—his colleagues like Fred Upton (R-MI) and Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) and every other Republican who's defected since they came up with this brilliant idea to make a bad bill even crueler. None of them believe Ryan's lies, either.