Paul Ryan dodges question about whether birth control will be free under ObamaCare replacement plan

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last updated 15 November 2016

During an interview Sunday on CNN's State of the Union, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) refused to get into the specifics of an ObamaCare replacement plan — including whether the plan would offer free birth control to insured women, as it does now. "With all due respect, I don't know that the average woman of childbearing years out there who relies upon contraception provided by health insurance, mandated by the Affordable Care Act, I don't know that she would think that that's just a nitty-gritty detail," CNN's Jake Tapper said, after Ryan said he was "not going to get into all the nitty-gritty detail of these things."

When further pressed, Ryan still would not say whether a replacement plan for ObamaCare — which President-elect Donald Trump and fellow Republicans have vowed to repeal — would cover contraception. Even when Tapper tried to get Ryan to say whether the provision of birth control was "important" to him, Ryan remained evasive. "I'm not going to get into hypotheticals about legislation that hasn't even been drafted yet," Ryan said.

Watch Ryan's interview with Tapper below. Their exchange about birth control starts at the 50-second mark. Becca Stanek