I Miiiight Have A New Crush

Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis) is kind of awesome, and he appears to be a new rising star in conservative politics. The video above is his presentation on the Patient’s Choice Act, part of some comprehensive health care reform legislation. This is what I love to see – concrete, substantive ideas which show sensible alternatives to Obamacare.

Ryan was interviewed recently by Human Events editor Jed Babbin, and responded to a question about single-payer systems. He said in part:

“Here’s where the nucleus of this problem occurs at least in my mind: the entire premise of a government-run plan option. The problem with that is that when you have the government as an offerer of health insurance in the marketplace, it is basically akin to having the referee serve also as a player in the game. The government has such enormous built in advantages, there is no way the private sector can compete with it….So every person that moves over the government pay plan because they have a pre-existing condition, they don’t have insurance now, or the employer says, I’ve had it, I don’t want to do it anymore, the government can take care of you, every one of those people who keeps moving over you get a death spiral with private health insurance becoming more expensive. So according to the Lewin Group, in a few years, 120 million people will move from private health insurance to government-run healthcare….According to Lewin, seven out of 10 people who have health insurance from their jobs will be losing it in the next few years under this kind of scenario. You have to understand, the goal here is to have a single-payer system but to use our rhetoric of choice and competition – “if you like what you’ve got you can keep it.” That’s really not the intent of the policy. The intent is, set up a system that LOOKS like if you like what you’ve got you can keep it, you can choose your plan, you can keep your doctor, but the effect of setting it up this way is that in just a handful of years the only thing left standing is the government plan option and it becomes the government plan monopoly.”

So, we’ve got democratic congresspeople saying that we’re going to single-payer, we’ve got republican congresspeople saying that we’re going to single-payer, all the signs point directly to a single-payer outcome, and yet we’ve got people reading this post right now who insist that’s not going to happen.

I don’t get it.

But you know what? I’m liking Paul Ryan. And he’s a hottie to boot.