Paul Ryan says he's been dreaming of capping Medicaid since he was 'drinking at a keg'

Paul Ryan.
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube)

House Speaker Paul Ryan took a trip down memory lane with the National Review's Rich Lowry on Friday at the National Review Institute's 2017 Ideas Summit in Washington, D.C. "So, Medicaid," Ryan said. "Sending it back to the states, capping its growth rate. We've been dreaming of this since I've been around — since you and I were drinking at a keg."

The Trump administration's analysis of the GOP health-care replacement estimates that 17 million people would lose Medicaid coverage, with even many Republicans thinking the cuts go too far. "If you're a Republican senator in, say, Ohio, do you really want to cut Medicaid benefits for hundreds of thousands of your constituents?" asks Jeff Spross at The Week. "Ryan is 47 years old, which means that, if he started 'drinking at a keg' early in his college career, he's fantasized about all the poor people who could be stripped of health care for nearly three decades," slammed the progressive blog ThinkProgress.

Admittedly, it's a bit of an odd thing to be considering at a kegger. "I was thinking about something else, he was thinking about reforming Medicaid," Lowry confessed.

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"I've been thinking about this for a long time," Ryan said.

Spross wrote further on the GOP's plot to "drown Medicaid in the bathtub," which you can read here.

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.