Republicans finally start work on a plan for Obamacare replacement

The GOP health care reform plan.
For two years, all we've heard from the Republican 2010 campaign promise of "repeal and replace" of Obamacare is repeal. And repeal. And repeal. Twenty-seven repeal votes to be more exact. With the Supreme Court as likely as not to strike the law down, Republicans are now on the spot to come up with something, anything to replace it with. Except what they're talking about is less replace than take the popular parts of the Affordable Care Act, and extend insurance to far fewer people.

Lawmakers and their aides say a Republican plan would focus on controlling healthcare costs and allowing people to retain coverage while changing jobs. They will avoid Obama's comprehensive approach to extend coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans.

The aim is to lay out a prospective agenda for the newly elected political leadership in 2013, based on a "step-by-step" approach consisting of separate bills that address specific problems within America's $2.6 billion healthcare system.

But if the high court justices struck down the entire law, Republicans could try to salvage some of the Affordable Care Act's provisions that are already in force and have proved popular with voters.

Toss in a little tort reform and their favorite idea of allowing people to buy insurance across state lines, and you have a plan that would insure far fewer people and cut the deficit by about half of what the Affordable Care Act would. Oh, and vouchers for Medicare. What would be lost?

Does all this mean congressional Republicans finally have a health care reform replacement plan? No. They have a handful of ideas cribbed from Obamacare and their favorite lobbyists, leaving millions still uninsured.