Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Ron Wyden have a radical plan to change the health-care law that, according to Max Fisher at Atlantic Wire, could please both proponents and opponents of the reform law. I'm not sure "plan" is quite the right word, though. In section 1332(a) of the Affordable Care Act, change 2017 to 2014. That's it.
As Politico explains, starting in 2017, Section 1332 of ACA already allows states to opt out of the individual mandate and other provisions, and lets them set up alternative arrangements of their own. These alternative schemes would receive the same amount of federal support as before, as long as they satisfied certain restrictions. The new Brown-Wyden "plan" would grant them this freedom three years earlier, in 2014, meaning that they would never have to set up a mandate-based system in the first place. The idea is simple: Let states go their own way from the outset, and we will find out what works best.
Is this "repeal and replace" or, as Ezra Klein calls it in praising the proposal, "compete and succeed"? The answer is both. Remarkable that the 2017 waiver provision attracted so little attention before. Just bringing it forward three years as good as repeals the law--as a plan for reform, even if not as a statement of goals.