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A group of leading Republican lawmakers on Wednesday proposed an outline for replacing the Affordable Care Act in a bid to advance traditional conservative healthcare goals, including deregulating health insurance, curtailing Medicaid spending and changing how health plans are taxed. The outline, which parallels a blueprint that senior GOP senators proposed in the last Congress, is not a formal bill. That precludes the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office from calculating its cost and its precise effect on the nation's healthcare system. (Levey, 2/4)

Republicans released the outline Wednesday as Democrats continue pounding away at them for pledging to repeal and replace Obama's law, practically since its 2010 enactment, without advancing a substitute. That's a growing political liability for Republicans because the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that this year, 19 million Americans will receive coverage as a result of the law, including large numbers in GOP-dominated states. (2/4)

Kaiser Health News staff writer Mary Agnes Carey reports: "Key GOP chairmen from the Senate and House plan to unveil a blueprint Thursday for repealing the health law and replacing it with a proposal the lawmakers said would reduce health care costs, improve quality and expand coverage. The measure retains many elements of a proposal Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Richard Burr of North Carolina released a year ago with former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. That proposal did not get traction, but the senators are pushing it again and now are working with House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich." (Carey, 2/5)