THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

As you may remember, some 5 years ago Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida described the then current Republican Health Plan with just 3 flip cards. "Don't Get Sick! And if You Do Get Sick, Die Quickly!"' Since then the country has enjoyed the benfits of the onset of The Affordable Care Act, sometimes referred to as Obamacare, the Republican controlled House has tried well over fifty times to repeal it and the ACA is now threatened in the Supreme Court by a cheap little legal trick that five Conservative Justices may choose to support. And in all that time the Republican plan has not changed a whit. Now that it looks like SCOTUS may royally screw us, they are busy as beavers pretending they have some alternative plans.

Senior Republicans in Congress hope that by June, the Supreme Court will invalidate the subsidies that 7.5 million Americans in 34 states have been given to purchase health insurance through the federal Healthcare.gov website. But the prospects of legal victory have also raised practical and political fears that Republicans will take the blame for the health care crisis that would follow.

A legislative scramble is underway. On Monday, Representatives Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, Fred Upton of Michigan and John Kline of Minnesota, the chairmen of the powerful committees that control health policy, proposed what they called an “off ramp” from the Obama health act that would let states opt out of the law’s central requirements.

On the other side of the Capitol, Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, all Republicans, offered their own plan this week to provide temporary assistance to those who would lose their subsidies and new freedom to all states to redesign their health care marketplaces without the strictures and mandates of the health care law.

Even a freshman, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, proposed a major but temporary expansion of Cobra — the program that allows workers to extend their employer-based health benefits after leaving a job — to ensure that people do not lose insurance coverage as Washington rushes to find an alternative.

“Finally there are a whole bunch of people stepping up to the plate,” Mr. Sasse said on Thursday.

These bridge plans would evaporate if the Supreme Court sides with the administration, but many of their ideas — and even broader plans that are emerging — will live on regardless of the court’s verdict.

None of the ideas can escape the fact that they are a regression to the bad old days of the Grayson revealed Republican Health Plan. But Republicans have never had a problem with people dying.