With the release of its draft Obamacare replacement bill, the Republican Party has set itself a monumental messaging challenge. After President Donald Trump repeatedly promised, for months, that the G.O.P.’s health-care alternative would provide “insurance for everybody” at a lower price, the actual bill does nothing of the sort. Instead, it is largely the product of traditional conservative orthodoxies, which hold that consumer choice, not affordability, should be the primary objective of health-care legislation. What this means in practice, among other things, is reducing taxes on the rich, who largely funded Obamacare; eventually rolling back the Medicaid expansion, which allowed millions of low-income Americans to get coverage; and replacing the current system of progressive subsidies with more regressive tax credits, which would shift costs from the middle- and upper-class to the working poor.

The draft G.O.P. plan, titled the American Health Care Act, is vehemently opposed by Democrats but also by a number of Republicans. Some, like Senators Lisa Murkowski and Cory Gardner, oppose reducing Medicaid benefits; others, like Senator Rand Paul and a number of conservative advocacy groups—including the powerful Heritage Action and Club for Growth—argue that the House bill is too generous, and risks creating a new, Republican-approved entitlement. All of which leaves the Republicans who have endorsed the bill—including the White House—with the difficult task of marketing a piece of legislation that half their critics believe is cruel and the other half not conservative enough.

To stave off accusations from both sides, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sought to reframe the debate. His pitch, as delivered to CNN’s Alisyn Camerota during an interview Tuesday, was thus: the American Health Care Act is not about gutting people’s access to affordable health care—especially low- and middle-income Americans who would likely be forced to pay much higher premiums under the new plan—but giving them a series of choices. Or, in the Republican vernacular: freedom.

“Well we’re getting rid of the individual mandate. We’re getting rid of those things that people said they don’t want,” Chaffetz explained when asked by Camerota how the G.O.P. plan for greater access would translate to coverage for lower-income Americans. “And you know what? Americans have choices. And they've got to make a choice. And so, maybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest it in their own health care. They’ve got to make those decisions for themselves.”

This is a specious choice for a number of reasons, not least because the price of an iPhone is hardly comparable to the price of health insurance coverage, let alone the out-of-pocket costs that many Americans are forced to pay if and when they get sick—costs that are likely to skyrocket under the House Republican plan, which would likely shift costs from premiums to deductibles. A new iPhone 7 Plus with 256 GB of memory costs $969 to purchase outright, or about $40 per month on a payment plan. The average, open-market individual health care plan costs closer to $4,600 per year—more if you are older.

All of which is beside the point, since the biennial purchase of a smartphone—a virtual necessity for almost anyone in today’s job market—likely has no effect on anyone’s decision to obtain insurance coverage. What the comparison does achieve, from Chaffetz’s perspective, is placing the responsibility for staying healthy and affording medical care back on individuals, rather than the state. If low-income families make the wrong series of choices, forcing them to choose between their health and their finances, that’s on them. How’s that for a winning message?