This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Orrin Hatch has issued the challenge, and Gary Herbert has accepted it. The Republican senator from Utah and the Republican governor of Utah are to be about designing a new system that will deliver health care better than the one devised by their shared enemy, Democratic President Barack Obama.

That will be really interesting to watch.

For all the shortcomings, glitches and statistical bounces associated with Obama's Affordable Care Act, the fact is that it did more to move the needle on two key indicators than any effort made since the creation of Medicare. It bent down the rate of increase for health care costs nationally and it extended the kind of coverage that citizens of civilized nations have long taken as a birthright to millions of Americans who would otherwise go without.

In Utah, 145,000 people have signed up for coverage on ACA exchanges, a 24 percent increase over last year.

The Congressional Budget Office warns that if the act, also known as Obamacare, is just repealed, the resulting cuts in taxes and predictable jump in health care costs will add some $353 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade.

So now we need a new system that will not amount to ripping the stitches from a wound.

It is unlikely that Republicans will now pull a Bernie Sanders and create a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system.

They will prefer a system that depends largely on private health insurers (as Obamacare does). One that offers choice for customers and some taxpayer assistance for those who can't afford to buy policies on their own (as Obamacare does). One that bans insurers from denying people coverage for pre-existing conditions (as Obamacare does).

They may promise to do away with Obamacare's individual mandate for everyone to buy coverage, if only because it sounds liberating. But, as even the most devoted anti-ACA wonks know, removing the mandate while keeping the availability of coverage can only destroy a system where healthy people don't pay in until they aren't healthy any more.

As he and other Republicans design a new health care plan, Hatch should recall the words of his good friend, Sen. Edward Kennedy, who challenged Obama and, through him, Congress and the nation to create a system where health care is not reserved to the wealthy and the fortunate.

"What we face," Kennedy wrote, "is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country."

The things that Obamacare provides — decency, dignity, health, not to mention a boost to every state's health care economy — can be provided in any of a number of ways. But they must be provided.

The Republicans now own that responsibility. Let us all hold them to it.