There have been a number of promising health care plans pitched by Republicans in the House and Senate in the past year as the ObamaCare debacle rolled out, but until now, there has been no unified vision to fix the nation’s healthcare system. 

That appears to have changed with Republican leaders finally adopting an agreed upon repeal and replace plan, drawing a much needed election-year contrast with the president’s unpopular health care law.

Robert Costa has the details in the Washington Post:

The plan includes an expansion of high-risk insurance pools, promotion of health savings accounts and inducements for small businesses to purchase coverage together.
The tenets of the plan — which could expand to include the ability to buy insurance across state lines, guaranteed renewability of policies and changes to medical-malpractice regulations — are ideas that various conservatives have for a long time backed as part of broader bills.
But this is the first time this year that House leaders will put their full force behind a single set of principles from those bills and present it as their vision. This month, House leaders will begin to share a memo with lawmakers outlining the plan, called “A Stronger Health Care System: The GOP Plan for Freedom, Flexibility, & Peace of Mind,” with suggestions on how Republicans should talk about it to their constituents.
“We’ve got to get to where you can compare the two perspectives, Republican and Democrat,” House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in an interview. “We’ve got all of these bills out there, so we’re going to take this core of policies and grow from there.”
Democrats, of course,  are disdainfully dismissing the Republican plan as a “purely political gesture.”

“If they had fixes, I’d certainly consider it,” Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.) said. “But if they are trying to scrap it all, going back to the bad old days, it’s not going to go anywhere.”

I imagine there are more Americans at the moment who would like to go back to the “bad old days” than keep ObamaCare. That’s why it is so crucial that Republicans pitch a viable alternative.

Stuart Varney explained the four principles behind the Republicans’ Repeal and Replace plan this morning on Fox News:

“Number one, restrict those costly medical lawsuits. Number two, many insurance companies sell all kinds of policies in all states – let them compete for your business. Number three, expand health savings accounts so individuals control more of their own money. Number four, make sure that if you get sick you cannot get kicked off your policy.”