Ryan Won't Defend Romney's Healthcare Law
The Weekly Standard reports:
This morning at a breakfast meeting sponsored by the American Spectator, Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan talked about what he's looking for in a Republican presidential candidate, reiterated he won't seek the White House, and left the door wide-open to accepting a vice presidential nomination.
Ryan said that in recent weeks he's talked to Governors Haley Barbour, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitch Daniels, but is keeping his mind open about a potential endorsement. “I don't really have a strong preference right now," Ryan said of the prospective 2012 field. "I want to wait and see what these people are made of and what they're going to talk about.”
“To me, what matters most is someone who really has conviction in their heart and mind on these core principles," he continued. "We can't just give it to the next person in line or [have] a personality contest. We will lose a personality contest. We will win an ideas contest.”
Asked about the Massachusetts health care plan signed into law by Mitt Romney, Ryan said, “It’s not that dissimilar to Obamacare, and you probably know I’m not a big fan of Obamacare. I just don’t think the mandates work … all the regulation they’ve put on it.”
“I haven't studied in depth the status of it," he continued, "but I think it’s beginning to death spiral. They’re beginning to have to look at rationing decisions. I don’t think this health care system works. That’s why I’m a believer in a consumer-based medicine, in consumer-based patient-centered reforms health care reforms.”
