Read @ NYTimes.com

Short of Repeal, G.O.P. Will Chip at Health Law

WASHINGTON — Republicans are serious. Hopeful of picking up substantial numbers of seats in the Congressional elections, they are developing plans to try to repeal or roll back President Obama’s new health care law.

This goal, though not fleshed out in a detailed legislative proposal, is much more than a campaign slogan. That conclusion emerged from interviews with a wide range of Republican lawmakers, who said they were determined to chip away at the law if they could not dismantle it.

House Republicans are expected to include some specifics in an election agenda they intend to issue Thursday. Although they face tremendous political and practical hurdles to undoing a law whose provisions are rapidly going into effect, they are already laying the groundwork for trying.

For starters, Republicans say they will try to withhold money that federal officials need to administer and enforce the law. They know that even if they managed to pass a wholesale repeal, Mr. Obama would veto it.

“They’ll get not one dime from us,” the House Republican leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, told The Cincinnati Enquirer recently. “Not a dime. There is no fixing this.”

Republicans also intend to go after specific provisions. Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a senior Republican on the Finance Committee, has introduced a bill that would eliminate a linchpin of the new law: a requirement for many employers to offer insurance to employees or pay a tax penalty. Many Republicans also want to repeal the law’s requirement for most Americans to obtain health insurance.

Alternatively, Republicans say, they will try to prevent aggressive enforcement of the requirements by limiting money available to the Internal Revenue Service, which would collect the tax penalties.

Republicans say they will also try to scale back the expansion of Medicaid if states continue to object to the costs of adding millions of people to the rolls of the program for low-income people.

Continues @ NYTimes.com
=========================

Keep the mandate but take away all the helpful provisions and safety nets that are provided. Nice going GOPers!  Of course all the restrictions on women's health will stay.  And those low income people? Oh, they can show up at the hospital with emergency needs and H1N1 in final stage - does the GOPer care?  What a royal mess!