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Congressional Republicans took a novel approach to announcing their Obamacare alternative this week: out with the old and well, back in with the old.

On Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee put out a news release announcing Burr, Hatch, Upton Unveil Obamacare Replacement Plan. The three men, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (Utah), House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (Mich.) and Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.), are well-regarded legislators, and the press went along with this news.

GOP unveils new Obamacare alternative, proclaimed The Hill newspaper.

Forbes cheered The Impressive New Obamacare Replace Plan from Republicans.

Take a look at the first real Republican Obamacare alternative, suggested The Examiner.

Robert Pear of The New York Times reported that the plan was drafted with encouragement from Republican leaders, devised by Hatch, Burr and Upton, and included a potentially explosive proposal. Pear reported that Republicans said the need for such an alternative had become more urgent.

But Caroline Behringer, the eagle-eyed press secretary for Democrats on the House Ways & Means committee, was suspicious that this urgent and explosive new proposal had just been devised. So she did some sleuthing and discovered that the Republicans had lifted the thing right down to quotes in the news release from the rollout of the same proposal a year earlier.

This new plan in fact had something old, something borrowed and something blue: a two-page explainer borrowing virtually the same 700 words from the 2014 version and even set in the same robins-egg blue font. The only thing that appeared to be new was the name of Upton, substituted for that of Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), who unveiled the plan with Hatch and Burr in 2014 but has since retired.

The nine bullet points were identical, as was the description of the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment (CARE) Act as a legislative plan that repeals Obamacare and replaces it with common-sense, patient-focused reforms that reduce health care costs and increase access to affordable, high-quality care. The first 359 words of the news release were the same as those in the previous years model, with the exception of Uptons quote. Burrs quote (The American people have found out what is in Obamacare --- broken promises) remained the same.

This exercise in cut-and-paste legislation would seem to suggest that Republicans are not serious about their new proposal. Like last time, the plan hasnt been drafted in legislative language, so it cant be reviewed by the Congressional Budget Office to see how much it would cost and how many would lose insurance.

More here:
Milbank: Republicans cut and pasted their new Obamacare alternative