Heritage Action for America, the advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, and the Tea Party-aligned group FreedomWorks will push Congress to cut off funding for the exchanges in the debate later this year over raising the debt ceiling, the Washington-based groups said. The chairman of the advocacy group Restore America’s Voice, Ken Hoagland, said he plans to warn people through advertising about the “dysfunctional” exchanges. While opposition to the health-care program is nothing new, the tactics are changing. Rather than focusing on repealing the law in Congress and the courts, two avenues that have failed so far, the groups are aiming to prevent the cornerstone of the legislation, the insurance exchanges, from succeeding. Their goal is to limit enrollments, drive up costs, and make it easier to roll back all or part of the law later.

When the 37th time repealing Obamacare proved not to be the charm, the Right might just be giving up on that one. Those votes have been purely symbolic anyway, but have opened up the GOP to no small amount of criticism and ridicule. It wouldn't be safe to take bets on the House never having another repeal vote (they are addicts, after all) but they've got a more effective way of killing the law: starving it for funds . And they'll do it with their favorite hostage, the debt ceiling.From the beginning, it's been clear that if the law's opponents could stop the law, they'd do everything in their power to sabotage it. That's why so many Republican governors and legislatures have refused to set up exchanges in their own states, or expand Medicaid. The fear is that if the law works, if people get affordable health insurance and get used it and use it and like it, it's disaster for opponents. The exchanges are the key to that. The mandate requires people buy insurance, and the exchange is how they'll do that. And the exchanges need to be well populated with healthy people.

And Republicans are going to do everything in their power to make all that not happen.