The GOP health care reform plan.
Well, look at this.
The New York Times notices something that we lefty bloggers have been talking about for quite awhile: that "repeal and replace" mantra the Republicans ran on in 2010 was a
fraud.
They never had a "replacement" plan and had no intention of doing the hard work to create one. Now they might have to, and they're going back to some old, half-baked ideas.
Republicans say they will have to make good on their pledge to replace the health care law if the Supreme Court strikes down any significant parts of it. [...]
“Our wheels are beginning to turn,” said Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which would have a large role in developing Republican alternatives to the Obama health care law. [...]
Republicans are dusting off proposals that date back more than a decade: allowing individuals to buy health insurance across state lines, helping small businesses band together to buy insurance, offering generous tax deductions for the purchase of individual policies, expanding tax-favored health savings accounts and reining in medical malpractice suits.
The Congressional Budget Office already
estimated their "plan" would only extend coverage to about three million additional people, while leaving
52 million uninsured, not to mention their "plan" for Medicare, which the
CBO says would result in "reduced access to health care; diminished quality of care; increased efficiency of health care delivery; less investment in new, high-cost technologies; or some combination of those outcomes."
Republicans have controlled the House for two years. By Speaker Boehner's count, they have voted 27 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and one actual vote on a "reform" plan, another tort reform bill that was actually, substantively just another repeal effort.
The only Republican who's ever had a real health care plan is Mitt Romney. And in order to win the Republican nomination, he's trying to pretend it never happened.