WASHINGTON – This morning, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) spoke with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday  about the upcoming Supreme Court decision in the King v. Burwell case and how Congressional Republicans are working to save Americans from Obamacare’s shortcomings while also developing patient-centered alternatives.

Ryan’s comments build on a House Ways and Means hearing earlier this week that featured testimony fromHealth and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell on the implementation of Obamacare. Excerpts of Congressman Ryan’s responses follow.

Republicans will continue to lead with alternatives to Obamacare:

“When Obamacare was being debated, we offered lots of different plans. We offered comprehensive, alternative solutions to Obamacare. Tom Coburn and I had a bill, for example, that would have dealt with this. Here’s the deal: We can have a system in America where everyone can get affordable coverage, including people with pre-existing conditions, without this costly government takeover, without raiding Medicare, without telling people you have to buy what the government says you have to buy.”

Providing an off-ramp to Obamacare, working toward full repeal:

“We want to see what the [Supreme Court’s] ruling is specifically so that we can customize our response to the actual ruling and that plan will involve making sure people have assistance as we transition to give people freedom from Obamacare. And the other question is: Can we replace this law completely in the next Presidency and in the next Congress? That is our goal. And the answer is yes we can.”

Sparing Americans from the consequences of Obamacare:

“We don’t want people to fall victim because of this bad law. We want to give people freedom fromObamacare. We want to give people a bridge from Obamacare. Not only do we want to make sure that families don’t suffer because of the failures of this law, we also want to give states the freedom to go their own direction and make it better. This law is failing. It is collapsing.

“Even if the court ruled for Obamacare, you still have a disaster on our hands – double digit premium increases, people aren’t getting what they want – so we want to give people more freedom to be able to buy what they want to buy, which is what Obama said you could do, and we want to give states more control.”

Calling on the Administration to listen to the American people & Congress to improve health care:  

“Here’s what [the Obama Administration] is saying: They are going to hold up a one page piece of paper and he’s going to say: ‘It’s my way or the highway, just give me my law.’ And ram it down the throats of the Americans, again. We’re not going to do that. I think everyone knows we are not going to do that.

“That’s what I was asking the Secretary, which is: Are you going to be intransigent and stubborn and say it’s only my way or the high way or are you going to work with Congress to fix this absolutely failed law and give us the ability to get people out of this, so that we can have more freedom for individuals and more freedom for the states? And we’ll find out.”

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