Still no ACA replacement plan, but GOP ads say it exists and is awesome

New online and TV ads say mystery plan will have better care, lower costs.

Beth Mole – Jan 13, 2017 4:38 pm | 578

President-elect Donald Trump meets with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) at the US Capitol. Credit: Getty | Zach Gibson

A GOP-affiliated group is spending more than $1.4 million to run digital and television advertisements that laud a Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act—despite the fact that the party has yet to present any such plan, Roll Call reports.

The ads have been launched by the American Action Network, a conservative advocacy group linked to House GOP leadership. These materials say the unidentified plan will create a health insurance system that has “more choices,” “better care,” and “lower costs” than the ACA. The ads began running Thursday and Friday in districts of vulnerable Republicans, GOP leaders, and “rank-and-file” Republicans from very conservative states.

The roll out of the ads coincides with voting in the Senate and House on budget resolution legislation that paves the way for defunding and dismantling the ACA through a budget reconciliation process. The party is expected to go ahead with repealing the ACA despite not having a replacement plan in place.

This week, Democrats, several Republican Congress members, and President-elect Donald Trump expressed concern about a repeal without having a replacement plan ready. Trump insists that a replacement will be “essentially simultaneous” in his press conference Wednesday.

Since the ACA was enacted in 2010, several members of the Republican party have come up with competing plans. But party leaders have yet to publicly embrace any of them or create a unified plan. Each of the plans proposed so far would not guarantee that the 20 million or so Americans that gained coverage through the ACA would maintain that coverage.

Nevertheless, the new ads suggest such a plan exists and that it will not only maintain coverage under the ACA, but it will be much better than Obama’s signature healthcare law. On top of improving quality and reducing costs, the advertised solution will “provide peace of mind to people with pre-existing conditions” and get rid of “senseless regulations” that hamper new cures, according to the ad. “House Republicans have a plan to get there without disrupting existing coverage,” it says.

AAN expects the ads will get 8.1 million views by the end of the month. See it for yourself below.

AAN’s TV ad