Last week, just before the Supreme Court ruled that Affordable Care Act is constitutional, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) told the Eagle Daily Investor that what ObamaCare is trying to do “is Sovietize the American health care system.”

Today on CBS’s Face The Nation, Coburn said he believes ObamaCare will Sovietize the U.S. health care system because “it means the bureaucrats and politicians are in charge of your health care”:

HOST NORAH O’DONNELL: What did you mean by that, Sovietize?

COBURN: Well it means the bureaucrats and politicians are in charge of your health care and that’s exactly what this has done there’s not going to be individual choice. Remember the components of this bill. There’s an IPAB bill, the preventative services task force, that is going to mandate what care will be given and what care won’t be. There’s the innovation council that will approve or disapprove of any new innovation. We have three agencies that are totally going to take away the options of your freedom about your care and about what you and your physician decide is best for you. So Soviet style — what I’m saying is you’re going to have a bureaucracy … government bureaucracy is one of the reasons costs are out of control.

Watch it:

But Coburn really shouldn’t fear the Independent Payment Advisory Board — a commission that would make recommendations for lowering Medicare spending to Congress. IPAB’s authority only kicks in if health care spending increases beyond a specific threshold and the board is specifically prohibited from rationing. The Affordable Care Act’s language specifically states that IPAB’s recommendations cannot “include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums…increase Medicare beneficiary cost- sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co- payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.”

Moreover, the CBO found that getting rid of IPAB would increase the national deficit by $3.1 billion and grow health care expenditures. And the commission is actually tasked with delivering a comprehensive proposal to reduce excess cost growth in Medicare.

Since the Supreme Court last week upheld the Affordable Care Act, Republicans have been scrambling for a response. Without much to say now that the law has been ruled constitutional, the GOP has fallen back on its pledge to repeal ObamaCare. However, the new health care law provides 30 million Americans with access to health insurance. So how do Republicans plan to replace this key feature if they repeal?

Fox News’s Chris Wallace asked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) this important question on Fox News Sunday today and the senior senator from Kentucky had no answer. After McConnell meandered through the typical GOP talking points that they plan to allow the sale of health insurance across state lines and that they will institute medical malpractice reform, he finally settled on an answer: Insuring Americans “is not the issue”:

WALLACE: One of the keys to ObamaCare is that it will extend insurance access to 30 million people who are now uninsured. In your replacement, how would you provide universal coverage?

MCCONNELL: Well first let me say the first single thing we can do for the American system is get rid of ObamaCare. … The single biggest direction we can take in terms of improving health care is to get rid of this monstrosity. [...]

WALLACE: But you’re talking about repealing and replace, how would you provide universal coverage?

MCCONNELL: I’ll get to it in a minute. [...]

WALLACE: I just want to ask, what specifically are you going to do to provide universal coverage to the 30 million people who are uninsured?

MCCONNELL: That is not the issue. The question is, how can you go step by step to improve the American health care system. … We’re not going to turn the American health care system into a Western European system.

Watch the clip:

If Republicans are successful in repealing ObamaCare, they’ll also have to answer how they’ll provide coverage for those with pre-existing conditions, lower-income Americans, and even the millions of young Americans who can now stay on their parents’ health care plans until age 26.