House repeals health-care reform – with no plan to replace it (+video)

“We’re not going to repeat the mistake of the other side and that is to decide what ought to be done behind closed doors and then shove it down the throat of Congress and the American people,” said Mr. Price, an orthopedic surgeon.

That race to jam a bill through Congress, Republicans will argue, produced a measure so massive, unwieldy, and poorly thought-through that it is weighing down the American economy with regulations and policies that simply don’t work. Such an argument ties health-care reform tightly to the issue that will almost certainly decide the November vote.

“The election is going to be about the economy," said Sen. John Barrasso (R) of Wyoming, an orthopedic surgeon who spoke with Price on the health-care panel on Tuesday. "The president’s health-care reform package is terrible for the national economy and for taxpayers."

“You’re not going to see a 2,700-page health-care law coming from us,” he added. “I just don’t think government does big things well. I’m much more interested in a step-by-step, common-sense approach.”

And third, Republican members will have an arsenal of established conservative ideas to choose from when asked for specifics, even though they won’t have a united, overarching policy plan. Price has his Empower Patients First Act. Senator Barrasso has sponsored the State Healthcare Choice Act. And a group of the House’s most conservative members, the Republican Study Committee, circulated a list of more than 200 measures sponsored by members over the past 18 months.

And those are just the contemporary proposals, coming in addition to untold volumes floated by conservative think tanks and policy groups over the years.

“There are countless proposals and each individual in their own district, in their own explanation to their constituents, is easily able to say, ‘These are the things that I believe, these are the kinds of bills that I support,’ ” Price said.

Republican strategy is informed by Democrats’ experience with health-care reform in two ways. First, they argue that having creamed congressional liberals in the 2010 elections with "Obamacare" as their primary weapon, they aren’t about to let Democrats shift the conversation from health-care reform in the runup to the 2012 vote. 

Next, they say that when they’re running Washington, they will look for health-care answers from both sides of the aisle.
 
There’s “a recognition we have to do this in a bipartisan fashion. I believe that all big reforms have to be bipartisan to be successful,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a top adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008 and president of the American Action Forum. “And one of the reasons is they’re informed by all the ideas, which span the spectrum. But in addition, [reforms] have a political durability if both sides buy in. The Affordable Care Act is a living testament to doing it wrong. It was done in a partisan fashion and it has come apart as a result.”

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