The 20 point gender gap in the 2012 election was the largest since Gallup poll began tracking in 1952 — the Obama-Biden ticket beat the Romney-Ryan ticket by a large margin with women, driven largely by women of color turning out at high rates for the President.

That loss was predictable based on polling that asked women questions about specific proposals in Paul Ryan’s previous budgets, which showed that women highly disapprove of cutting Medicaid, Medicare, and other vital programs that meet their health care needs. But the budget Ryan released this week suggests he learned nothing from women’s responses at the voting booth.

Ryan has never been a friend to women’s health, and has repeatedly taken action to limit women’s rights and access to health care — and his new budget is just more of the same. It would dismantle the advancements made through the Affordable Care Act and institute dramatic reductions in the services available through key programs, on top of the cuts women’s health services are already facing as a result of the sequester.

Here are the top four ways the new Ryan Budget (which is just the same as the old Ryan budget) guts key programs for women’s health:

1. Repeals crucial reforms in the Affordable Care Act.

Millions of women would lose the consumer protections and access to affordable health coverage that they gained under the health law. These reforms are critical for both women’s health and economic security.

The Ryan budget would eliminate the ban on discrimination against those with preexisting conditions, including breast cancer, Cesarean sections, rape, and health needs related to domestic violence; provisions that allow young women to stay on their parents health insurance plans until age 26; premium tax credits that help individuals and small businesses purchase health insurance; Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid; and a slew of other benefits that the law provides for women’s health.

By repealing protections in Obamacare, the Ryan budget would preserve an individual health insurance market that routinely discriminates against women. Insurance companies in the individual market charge women $1 billion more in premiums than men each year for the same set of benefits. Under the health reform law, insurers will also be required to cover maternity care — only 12 percent of plans on the individual market currently do.

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Our guest blogger is Lindsay Rosenthal, a Research Assistant for Health Policy and Women’s Health and Rights at the Center for American Progress.

Despite the fact that women voted en masse to reject Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget plan in the November election, this week’s unveiling of the latest House Republican budget shows that Rep. Ryan still doesn’t get it when it comes to standing with women and promoting the economic security of their families.

The latest Ryan budget puts a tight cap on the area of the budget that funds vital supports for low-income girls and young adults, like nutrition assistance for expectant mothers and their children, child development, childcare, and education assistance. Adult women struggling to feed their families would see their food stamp (or SNAP) benefits cut. Changes to Medicaid would jeopardize women’s access to affordable health care and long-term care — making matters worse for women doing their best to care for themselves, their children, and their aging parents — and turning Medicare into a voucher program would shift costs onto senior women, jeopardizing their future economic security.

Unfortunately, just as in past years, the former vice presidential candidate has put forth a budget that rewards the rich with a huge tax break while cutting off opportunity and pathways out of poverty for women at every critical juncture in their lives:

Our guest blogger is Katie Wright, a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Days after top House Republicans asked President Obama to expand a provision in the Affordable Care Act, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) admitted on Wednesday that the ACA incorporates provisions that Republicans “have always been talking about,” including solutions he himself proposed in 2009.

During an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Ryan singled out state-based exchanges and high-risk insurance pools, both of which Democrats included in the final law after months of negotiations with Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee. The exchanges or new regulated marketplaces for insurance will go online by 2014, while the temporary high risk pool program for individuals and families with pre-existing conditions has enrolled more than 100,000 people, but stopped accepting new applicants in February.

The House Budget Chairman — who on Tuesday introduced a measure that would repeal most of the health care law — claimed that the administration “screwed” the Republican-backed proposals and “destroyed” them, pointing to a 2009 bill he offered with Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Richard Burr (R-NC) as a plan to fix the broken health care system:

RYAN: Look, exchanges at the state level is something we have always been talking about. Tom Coburn and I had a bill. I think they have kind of messed up the idea of exchanges but the idea from conservative standpoint is a revived idea that can work. The other thing is high risk pools. They screwed the high risk pools and didn’t work in Obamacare but a way of making them work from our minds to make sure that people with preexisting conditions can get considerable health insurance. We think some in that law were destroyed but revive those things in an effort to replacing the law.

Ryan introduced the Patient Choice Act as an alternative to President Obama’s health care proposal on May 20, 2009. And while the bill taxed the full value of employer health benefits, issued refundable tax credits, and expanded the use of Health Savings Accounts, it had some similarities to what ultimately became the ACA.

For instance, the measure encouraged states to “establish rational and reasonable consumer protections” by forming State Health Insurance Exchanges to give Americans a choice of “different” private “health insurance policies” and issue standard benefits, offering “coverage to any individual regardless of age or health.” The bill even included “non-profit, independent board” to penalize insurance companies “that cherry pick health patients and reward insurers that cover patients with pre-existing conditions.” It described the board as “a model that works in several European countries.”

The high-risk insurance pools that are included in the ACA were advanced by the GOP during Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential bid in 2008. The measure is designed as a bridge to the exchanges for families and individuals who don’t have an offer of coverage from an employer and cannot find insurance in the individual market.

With the release of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) latest budget for the House GOP, a number of commentators are asking why the plan resurrects the idea of privatizing and imposing premium support on Medicare, even after the GOP just lost a presidential election in which that very proposal was a major sticking point.

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd brought up the matter Tuesday morning with Rep. Steve Daines (R-MT), and none other than Fox News’ Chris Wallace put the question to Ryan himself this past Sunday. Ryan’s response was basically that while he and Mitt Romney lost the general vote, they won the vote that actually matters:

CHRIS WALLACE: Now, you know, I don’t have to tell you, this was a big issue in the campaign, between Romney-Ryan versus Obama-Biden. They think they won and they think that’s one of the reasons they won. And there are, Congressman, a lot of independent strategists that say if you put this into effect, the net effect economists will be that seniors will end up having to pay more a share of their health care costs.

PAUL RYAN: Well, first of all, it’s not a voucher. It’s premium support. Those are very different. […]

And I would argue against your premise that we lost this issue in the campaign. We won the senior vote. I did dozens of Medicare town hall meetings in states like Florida, explaining how these are the best reforms to save the shrinking Medicare program and we are confidently this is the way to go.

Daines repeated that talking point to Todd: “Remember, the President did not carry seniors. Mitt Romney carried seniors 56 to 44. So seniors understand the issues here. [Medicare] needs to be reformed, so that their children and grandchildren have that safety net.”

Setting aside the issues with Ryan’s proposal to “preserve” Medicare in this fashion, there’s a more fundamental problem with this argument: It cites the wrong senior vote.

Apparently, according to Ryan and Daines, the fact that Ryan and Romney clinched the senior vote is more significant than the fact that they lost the general vote because seniors are the ones who are actually on Medicare, and are presumably best positioned to judge any changes to the program. But the seniors Ryan and Romney won are current seniors — and, for every one of his budgets, Ryan has explicitly stated that current seniors will not be moved into his premium support system. For those 55 and above, “no changes whatsoever in Medicare.” So by his own logic and his own policies, Ryan actually needed to win current voters under 55 to claim a mandate.

According to exit polling, the 2012 GOP presidential ticket won voters 65 years old and older by 56 percent to 44 percent — Daines’ number. And they won the 45-64 vote by 51 to 47. So they got at least a little bit of the under 55 crowd. But they lost voters 30-44 by 45 to 52, and they lost voters 18-29 by a whopping 37 to 60. Given who would actually be living with the reality of Ryan’s schemes, it’s hard to interpret those numbers as a mandate.