WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans, who once promised to “repeal and replace” President Barack Obama’s health care law, for now have all but given up pushing alternatives to the sweeping legislation the president signed in 2010. WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans, who
WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans, who once promised to “repeal and replace” President Barack Obama’s health care law, for now have all but given up pushing alternatives to the sweeping legislation the president signed in 2010.
In the last year and a half, House Republicans have sent the Senate just one 36-page bill designed to limit medical malpractice lawsuits, despite pledging to develop detailed legislation to slow rising health care costs, help Americans keep their health plans and broaden access to insurance.
And, as the House prepares to take its 33rd vote to repeal all or part of the Affordable Care Act, senior Republicans say they will not try to move a replacement plan until 2013 at the earliest. “There might be a chance for us to do this next year,” House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif., said Tuesday.
At the same time, GOP lawmakers are rejecting the notion that any replacement legislation should expand health coverage as much as the current law.
“Conservatives cannot allow themselves to be browbeaten for failing to provide the same coverage numbers as Obamacare,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told a gathering at the conservative American Enterprise Institute this week.
Many Republicans say it makes little sense to write replacement legislation when they can’t get a repeal bill through the Democratic Senate. “I’m perplexed by this obsession with the replace part when the repeal hasn’t occurred,” said House Republican Policy Committee chairman Tom Price, R-Ga.
But the retreat from a central 2010 campaign promise to deal with the nation’s health care problems has prompted even some conservative health care experts to say Republicans owe voters more detail about how they would control costs and protect sick and poor Americans.
“One of the big questions that the public needs to ask Republicans who are so focused on repeal is what will come in its place,” said Gail Wilensky, who headed the Medicare and Medicaid programs under President George H. W. Bush and advised Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., during his 2008 presidential campaign.
