Ryan's Obamacare Alternative is a Fraud

by Deacon Blues

I could write a long piece about Donald Trump's attack upon the Clintons today, wherein he called Hillary a "world class liar", which coming from Trump is the pot calling the kettle black. CNN, the NYT, NPR, ABC News, and others have already called out Trump himself for lying today in his attack, but this it is standard Rovian political theory to attack your opponent from your own position of weakness in an effort to keep them on the defensive. Nothing new there, except that Donald Trump himself is nothing more than a pathological fraud and liar.

What's just as interesting however is that Paul Ryan finally rolled out the GOP alternative to Obamacare today, 6 years late. Needless to say, it is nothing new but a rehash of standard GOP scraps that would destroy our healthcare system and throw millions off of coverage. And did I mention that Ryan had the gall today to once again call for block-granting Medicaid, a recipe for GOP governors to throw thousands of people into the abyss, while Ryan also called for a Medicare premium support model, which is GOP dog whistling for destroying Medicare too.

Note that Ryan rolled this out at a time when health care insecurity is at a record low, due in large part to Obamacare. Yet Ryan and Donald Trump call for the immediate repeal of it, during Trump's first 100 days.

If you are looking for evidence that the GOP is a dead and bankrupt party, it is too easy to look at Trump's ascension as Exhibit A. Ryan's sad and intellectually dishonest "cure" for our health care system has no costs or numbers of affected Americans tied to it, even though the GOP's purported main policy wonk (Ryan) has had years to develop this. The truth is that the GOP hates government healthcare and doesn't care if "those people" die in the streets. It's also true that like Ted Cruz, who was also regarded by the media as a very smart if not brilliant mind inside the Beltway, Paul Ryan is just as overrated as a supposed "policy wonk."

If Paul Ryan is the intellectual cornerstone of the GOP establishment, and Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the GOP's "faces", then the Republican Party is truly dead.