Republicans, 16 years into Obamacare, pretend they have a health care plan (they don’t)

[Thiệu Ngô]

Asked if his party has a health care blueprint, JD Vance boasted, “We do have a plan, actually.” Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

By Steve Benen

As the ongoing government shutdown drags on, in large part over the fight to keep health care insurance affordable for Americans, Republicans have become increasingly unsubtle in their overt opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise declared late last week that for 90% of his GOP conference, the ACA is a “sinkhole” and a “failed product.” Soon after, House Speaker Mike Johnson condemned the popular and effective system as a “boondoggle.” Around the same time, Rep. Byron Donalds, a leading Republican candidate for Florida governor, insisted that officials “have to repeal and replace” Obamacare, echoing the phrasing his party seemed to abandon years ago.

Of course, one of the obvious questions is what, exactly, the GOP would offer American families after they’re done repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told CNBC last week that the White House is looking for an overhauled system that costs less and does more for consumers. And while that certainly sounded nice — who would oppose a cheaper system that delivers higher quality care? — the South Dakota Republican said literally nothing about how his party would deliver such reform.

This week, the House speaker boasted to CNBC, “We’ve got pages and pages and pages of ideas of how to reform health care.” What are the ideas included on those pages? The Louisiana Republican didn’t say.

A day later, JD Vance appeared on Newsmax and was asked whether his party has a health care plan. “We do have a plan, actually,” the vice president replied.

They don’t have a plan, actually.

Indeed, the more the Ohio Republican tried to answer the question, the more obvious it became that he wasn’t willing to share even the vaguest details about his party’s preferred blueprint.

The party has been stuck on this path for a painfully long time. In fact, it was on June 17, 2009, more than 16 years ago, when then-Rep. Roy Blunt made a bold promise. The Missouri Republican, a member of the House Republican leadership at the time, had taken the lead in crafting a GOP alternative to the Affordable Care Act, and he proudly and publicly declared, “I guarantee you we will provide you with a bill.”

The same week, then-House Minority Whip Eric Cantor told reporters that the official Republican version of “Obamacare” was just “weeks away.”

That was 833 weeks ago. There’s still no bill.

In April 2016, then-Republican Rep. Fred Upton, who chaired the House Energy and Commerce Committee at the time, told reporters, “Give us a little time, another month or so. I think we’ll be pretty close to a Republican alternative.”

That was 114 months ago. There’s still no alternative.

And then, of course, there’s Donald Trump, who famously declared during last year’s campaign, “I have concepts of a plan,” following several years’ worth of rhetoric about the unveiling of his plan being just “two weeks” away.

It’s against this backdrop that Vance apparently wants the public to believe that he and his party “do have a plan, actually.”

Maybe we’ll see it right around the time Team Trump releases the Epstein files, the tape of border czar Tom Homan accepting $50,000 in cash in a Cava bag, the president’s tax returns and the administration’s evidence to bolster its deadly military strikes on civilian boats in international waters.