House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday denied the suggestion that moderate Republicans could lose their districts for supporting the GOP healthcare bill.
Asked if centrist Republicans are at risk of losing in 2018 over the American Health Care Act, Ryan replied, "No. I think people's seats are at risk if we don't do what we said we would do," the Washington Examiner reports.
"We all campaigned on repealing and replacing this law that is collapsing," he added. "The American healthcare system in the individual market is in peril right now. We have a moral obligation to prevent people from getting hurt, to stop damage from being continued, and we promised that we would do this. If you violate promise, if you commit the sin of hypocrisy in politics, that's the greater risk, I think, to a person's seat."
The conservative House Freedom Caucus recently endorsed a revised version of the GOP healthcare bill, but Ryan and other Republican leaders are still searching for votes on Capitol Hill.
On Thursday, when asked at his weekly press conference if the House would vote on the bill before President Donald Trump's 100th day in office, he replied that the House will "go when we're ready to go," Politics USA reported.
"This has been a very organic bottom up process," he continued. "It takes time to do that … a long time, at least a year, so that's why we're working on the path to get it right, and not constrain it to some artificial deadline."