Today POLITICO Arena asks:

House Republicans are expected to approve a bill on Wednesday that would repeal the Obama health care law. But they are not yet offering a specific replacement for “Obamacare”. Will they pay a price politically for not immediately presenting an alternative? Or is the 2010 law sufficiently unpopular that repeal itself will be enough heading into the 2012 elections?

My response:

Does anyone really expect the scores of new House Republicans, who’ve just now arrived in Washington, to already have a plan to replace ObamaCare? Let’s be serious. The first step for new members is to keep their campaign promise by voting to repeal this unpopular scheme — if for none other than symbolic reasons. The next is to hold hearings and then to start defunding various of its provisions. And in the course of that, a better approach will emerge, one hopes. Remember, Republicans were shut out of the process that created ObamaCare.

Yet at the Arena this morning we see the usual Democratic responses. Timothy Jost writes, for example: “Health care is rapidly becoming unfordable [sic]; to the government, to employers, to ordinary Americans.” So government, for which health care is becoming unaffordable, is going to solve that problem?! How? By printing money? By imposing price and service controls? That’ll be popular — with doctors and patients alike!

The basic problem is too much government in the health care arena. It’s anything today but a market. Those approaches that have reintroduce market forces — like health savings accounts — have worked quite well. We have them at Cato. We like them. But they won’t be allowed under ObamaCare. Why? Because the Democrats know what’s best for us. What’s best, they believe, is for us to be dependent on government for our health care. No thanks.