Caroline Behringer, the eagle-eyed press secretary for Democrats on the House Ways and 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 set in the same robin’s-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 year’s model, with the exception of Upton’s quote. Burr’s quote (“The American people have found out what is in Obamacare — broken promises. . . .”) remained the same.