Marjorie Taylor Greene Rips Mike Johnson For Having No Health Care Plan To Replace ACA

WASHINGTON — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Tuesday tore into her own party leader, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), for failing to produce a GOP health care plan that could replace the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans have been unsuccessfully trying to dismantle for years.

Greene went off on Johnson on social media, after a reporter shared that she’d told House Republicans on an earlier conference call that she was tired of them taking their cues from White House political staff. She also reportedly said on the call that she wanted Senate Republicans to get rid of the filibuster in order to bypass Democrats to reopen the government.

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“You left out that I said I have no respect for the House not being in session passing our bills and the President’s executive orders,” the conservative firebrand wrote on X, taking a shot at Johnson for not keeping the House in session amid the shutdown.

Her deeper dig, though, was on the speaker’s lack of a Republican health care proposal to replace the ACA, also referred to as Obamacare.

“I demanded to know from Speaker Johnson what the Republican plan for healthcare is to build the off-ramp off Obamacare and the ACA tax credits to make health insurance affordable for Americans,” Greene said. “Johnson said he’s got ideas and pages of policy ideas and committees of jurisdiction are working on it, but he refused to give one policy proposal to our GOP conference on our own conference call.”

“Apparently I have to go into a SCIF to find out the Republican healthcare plan!!!” she added, referring to a room in which classified documents can be viewed.

A Johnson spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The federal government has been shut down since Oct. 1 as Senate Democrats refuse to reopen it without tying that vote to an extension of ACA subsidies set to expire at the end of the year for millions of Americans. Republicans have refused to agree to that, so the shutdown continues with no end in sight.

ACA open enrollment begins Nov. 1, which is when millions of Americans will feel the sticker shock of their health insurance premiums skyrocketing.

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The reality is that Johnson, like so many of his predecessors, does not have an alternative GOP health care plan that can replace the ACA. Nearly 24 million Americans rely on the ACA for their health coverage, and an October poll by KFF Health found that 78% of adults say Congress should extend the enhanced tax credits set to expire this year.

Johnson has tried to bumble his way through questions about a Republican health care plan. During a press conference on Monday, he held up a stack of papers when asked by a reporter if his party is working on a solution to the expiring ACA tax credits. Except those papers weren’t a health care plan — they were a framework for a plan, compiled in 2019 by the Republican Study Committee, a group of House conservatives.

“Republicans have a long list of ideas,” the speaker insisted.

Republicans, and Democrats, still need actual health care, though, and many have it thanks to the ACA.

More than 3 in 4 ACA marketplace enrollees live in states won by President Donald Trump. In Johnson’s own state, enrollment in ACA’s individual marketplace has grown by nearly 234% over the past five years

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