Power

Ryan Would Repeal Affordable Care Act Despite Using It to Fund Projects in His District

Just because he opposes health care reform doesn't mean he didn't want a piece of the pie.

Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan has been adamant about his desire to end “Obamacare” and repeal health care reform — even though large portions of it have been said to be based on the same principles enacted in Massachusetts under his running mate Mitt Romney’s time as governor.

But Romney isn’t the only one with a complicated love/hate relationship with the Affordable Care Act. Ryan himself, despite campaigning against the ACA, requisitioned funding under it for members of his own district.

Via The Nation:

On December 10, 2010, Ryan penned a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services to recommend a grant application for the Kenosha Community Health Center, Inc to develop a new facility in Racine, Wisconsin, an area within Ryan’s district. “The proposed new facility, the Belle City Neighborhood Health Center, will serve both the preventative and comprehensive primary health care needs of thousands of new patients of all ages who are currently without health care,” Ryan wrote.

The grant Ryan requested was funded directly by the Affordable Care Act, better known simply as health care reform or Obamacare. 

In addition to undercutting his political message about health reform, the letter may also add to an emerging narrative that Ryan has a double standard when it comes to critiquing major Obama policy achievements. Shortly after Romney announced that Ryan would be joining him on the Republican ticket this year, the Boston Globe revisited a story showing how Ryan quietly lobbied the Obama administration for stimulus grants. Ryan voted against the proposal and denounced it to the press without disclosing his requests for stimulus cash.  

Ryan first denied responsibility for the stimulus grant requests; but later confessed that his office had sent the letters.

Considering Ryan paid for college in part using social security payments, but wants to destroy that program too, this shouldn’t be any shock at all.