by demachic

How many times have you heard the GOP scream their talking point “repeal and replace” President Obama’s Affordable Care Act? It’s become their mantra. Their candidate, Willard Romney, does that a lot. And now, even Republicans are admitting what a colossal waste of breath that is, because they know they have nothing to replace it with. As old time comedians would say, “They got nothin’.”

Their 2009 alternative humiliated the party, because, for one, people don’t take kindly to killing Medicare. Not only that but the Congressional Budget Office shot their proposal down because it would have left more than 50 million Americans without health insurance. It also made it more costly for the sick.

Good plan, guys.

Now it’s election year 2012, and Willard and his GOP buddies are awfully vague about what they’d replace the ACA with, because, again, “they got nothin’.”

And what little they do have admittedly wouldn’t cover as many Americans as “Obamacare” does.

The L.A. Times has an entire article devoted to this:

Congressional Republicans, who once promised to “repeal and replace” President Obama‘s healthcare law, for now have all but given up pushing alternatives to the sweeping legislation the president signed in 2010. [...]

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-San Dimas) 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. [...]

But Republican leaders have not brought any of these proposals to a vote.

That has shielded the party’s ideas from close scrutiny by independent analysts, a politically risky process that could highlight legislation’s costs and its impact on consumers and others.

The GOP plan is this: We’ll tell you later, but we won’t divulge much because we know you won’t like what little we have to say.