The Republican Response to Obamacare

Two weeks after Republicans took control of the House in January, they kept a key campaign promise and voted to repeal President Barack Obama's health-care law. The Democratic Senate later rejected the repeal, but House Republicans say they still plan to "replace Obamacare with something that's a lot better," says Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Their focus, he says, is to lower the cost of care.

Yet according to a Bloomberg analysis, the alternatives suggested so far—ranging from limiting malpractice lawsuits to allowing insurers to sell across state lines—would save less than $5 billion a year. That's less than 0.6 percent of the $836 billion the government spent on health care in 2009. "None of these proposals get to the heart of what the issue is, which is to really address cost," says Ashish Kaura, a health-care analyst with Booz & Co. "They nibble around at the margins."