Why Did Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio Promise an Alternative Plan to Obamacare but Never Deliver? [+video]

As Congress comes back this week to additional speculation about whether or not Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will throw his hat into the race for Speaker, there’s another question surrounding the House Ways and Means Committee Chairman:

Where’s the Obamacare alternative that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said he was working with Paul Ryan on…?

Eighteen Months—And Counting

In an interview with a Denver radio station just before the midterm elections, Sen. Rubio, when asked what would happen with Obamacare in the new Congress, said “I’ve actually been working on one [Obamacare alternative] with Paul Ryan that we hope to introduce soon.” He then went on to outline some general principles for an alternative, including more personalized health insurance options, and equalizing the tax treatment of health insurance.

That was nearly one year ago—and eighteen months since the first rumors appeared that Rubio and Ryan were working on a plan. Since then, the rumor mill among health wonks on and off Capitol Hill has speculated about what was, or was not, in this supposed alternative.

Since then, Sen. Rubio has written two health care op-eds—the first around the time of the Supreme Court heard arguments in King v. Burwell, and the second days before Gov. Scott Walker released his own health care proposal. Chairman Ryan co-signed neither. Both pieces included three carefully-parsed paragraphs outlining an alternative—and I know they were carefully parsed because those three paragraphs are nearly identical in each article.

But two op-eds—which dedicated more time bashing Obamacare than explaining what should replace it—do not a “plan” make. For instance, the op-eds propose a new refundable credit for health coverage, and says, “we should set the tax preference for employer-sponsored insurance on a glide path to ensure that it will equal the level of the credits at the end of the decade.” But that language doesn’t begin to explain how this quite novel approach to the tax treatment of health care would work in practice. And it also doesn’t explain why the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which happens to have jurisdiction over tax policy, decided not to endorse it.

The questions ask themselves: Where’s the Rubio-Ryan plan? Did Rubio decide to go off on his own? If so, why exactly did Paul Ryan decide not to endorse the Rubio plan?

The next Republican debate is a week from Wednesday. Perhaps we’ll find out then. (For more from the author of “Why Did Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio Promise an Alternative Plan to Obamacare but Never Deliver?” please click HERE)

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