I suspect that during the week they vote on repeal there will be one or more GOP bills that are touted to replace the existing act.
How substantive do you think they will be? I expect they will float a bill with public relations items like interstate sales, tort reform, and various protections for not covering contraception and conscience exemptions, but nothing that would provide an actual framework for a health care systems or which address the issues associated with pre-existing conditions or low income.
Getting the Pubs to agree on some grand unified alternative structure would be like herding cats. It will take a new POTUS and new leadership to get there.
I just don't think it's possible. Not because Republicans are uniquely evil, but because this isn't an issue that motivates people who are Republican to go into politics, so the caucus is full of people who don't feel strongly about this issue except in opposing new government funding for people who generally don't vote Republican. (I'm not trying to be nasty here.) I don't think there's anyone who has the leadership to make a dramatic change here and the will to confront a caucus which has many people who have reasons to vote against a major reform.
I'm trying to think of a similar issue with Democrats... maybe it's more like trying to reform Agriculture Policy with a party which has almost no farm state members. People just don't care.
Yes, except that we cannot afford the status quo. We are going broke. Plus the public won't stand for folks just going without treatment for something major or contagious. One can argue that many Pubs are mean or uncaring or whatever, but your thesis of Pub motivations requires major dumbness as well. The Pub masses just need some intelligent leadership, and a clear delineation of just what the realistic options are. Right now the voting public as a whole is just not getting much guidance at all - just demagoguery and pie in the sky word sketches of what it would be like if only the Jubilee occurred.
