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CAMBRIDGE, Md. — Seeking to distinguish themselves as a party of alternatives, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Republicans will vote on an alternative to President Barack Obama’s health care law this year.

“House Republicans will rally around an alternative to Obamacare and put it on the floor and pass it this year,” he said.

The discussion among Republicans, however, has centered on whether they should produce lengthy bills during an election year when the party has as close to a sure lock on maintaining a majority in the House.

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden told reporters that any time you produce legislation you risk facing backlash, but he said he prefers for his candidates to have policy to defend on the campaign trail.

“I think as a party, if we’re seen as the opposition party and we spend all our time talking about what we’re opposed to, we miss a great opportunity to actually woo voters over to our side,” the Oregon Republican said. “You need something positive to run on.” http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/cantor-house-to-vote-on-gop-obamacare-al
ternative/

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GOP Quietly Alters Its Obamacare Alternative To Scrap Huge Tax Hike

It appears that the Senate Republicans who put forward their own alternative to Obamacare have quietly refined their proposal, undoing what would have been a significant tax increase on most Americans.

The apparent change centers on the plan's tax treatment of health insurance. Right now, health insurance contributions by employees and their employers are not taxed; the GOP wanted to include a cap on how much of those contributions can remain untaxed.

But the devil is in the details. The original eight-page proposal released by the Senate Republicans ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/202598856/Senate-GOP-Obamacare-Alternative) -- Richard Burr of North Carolina, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and Orrin Hatch of Utah -- said that the new cap would be "65 percent of an average plan's costs." Health policy experts told TPM that this would likely result in a big tax increase on most Americans and some would probably lose their insurance.

"It's obviously a substantial increase on people who get employer-sponsored insurance," Gary Claxton, vice president at the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, told TPM of the original proposal. "This would be a meaningful hit on people. It's a big radical change. This is not an incremental thing, and it affects most people under 65."

The Congressional Budget Office recently analyzed ( http://www.cbo.gov/budget-options/2013/44903) a similar, though not identical, proposal and estimated that it would raise $613 billion in revenue over nine years, while six million people would lose their employer coverage in the five years after it took effect.

The initial reporting on the GOP's new proposal, by the Washington Post and National Journal as well as TPM, highlighted that the plan would likely lead to many Americans paying more for their insurance. National Journal observed that, under the GOP's plan as originally proposed, if you had an average health plan, you'd pay taxes on 35 percent of its costs.

It seems the Senate Republicans noticed this problem -- a significant tax increase on average Americans isn't likely to be a winner when the GOP has spent years decrying Obamacare's impact on the middle class -- and changed the proposal's specifics accordingly. Or they realized how poorly they worded the original proposal and sought to clarify their intentions. It's impossible to say, and their offices declined to explain.

Some time after the original proposal was released Monday, a new one-page explainer on the tax provisions appeared on Coburn's website ( http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_
id=ee64bd80-5830-4c9b-acd5-b4225cbc1cd8). And it included a huge change. The cap would now be "65 percent of the average market price for an expensive high-option plan" instead of just "an average plan's costs," as the original proposal said. Coburn's office did not return multiple requests for comment on the proposal's tax provisions. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/gop-obamacare-alternative-tax-increase

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"Look, look, we have an alternative. *whisper, whisper* No wait, that won't work." Rinse, repeat

This proposal is 4 years late and short by a mile. It is DOA.

What is it about the ACA these guys hate so much? The affordable part? The insurance part? Or is it the healthcare part? And why now? Why didn't they offer this nonstarter 4 years ago?

LOL by the time they are done amending and retinkering they'll arrive at...wait for it...Romneybamacare!

My question is: How do they make up the lost revenue needed to pay for their plan?

I see the GOP hasn't lost its gift for voodoo economics.

They're expanding into voodoo health care policy.

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