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Gohmert: Obamacare Is Like Paul Ryan’s Medicare Plan, But It Would Still Lead To Govt Takeover

Since the GOP has endorsed Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan to completely privatize Medicare, some Republicans have abandoned their claim that the Affordable Care Act would lead to single payer government health care and begun arguing that Ryan’s reforms are very similar to the exchange structure in the ACA. “It’s exactly like Obamacare,” said NRSC chairman Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in the Capitol several weeks ago. “It is. It’s exactly like it. Which strikes me as bizarre that you’re seeing so much pushback [from Democrats].”

This afternoon, during an appearance on ‘Point of View,’ Gohmert attempted to balance these two completely contradictory arguments by arguing that the ACA would lead to more private competition and a government takeover simultaneously:

GOHMERT: But with regard to Medicare, it actually does what Obamacare does, but it does so far more efficiently. It gives patients far more control and that is it gives money in order to provide what’s needed to buy private health insurance. That would be far better than having the government takeover the health insurance business which is what we’ve been told what we’re all about here with Obamacare.

Listen here:

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While there are certain structural similarities between the ACA and Ryan proposals, the GOP budget would move seniors from a comprehensive system into one that is decidedly less efficient and more costly. As the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has pointed out in its analysis of the Ryan proposal, “a typical beneficiary would spend more for health care….[because] private plans would cost more than traditional Medicare because of the net effect of differences in payment rates for providers, administrative costs, and utilization of health care services.”