This chart, shameless lifted from Kaisir Health News, shows rather dramatically how conservativism of the Republicans have taken hold over the past 15 years.

Seventeen years ago, Republican Senator John Chaffee (R-RI), a moderate (now deceased), proposed a health care bill.  In many ways, it is very similar to the Senate Bill passed last December (which in itself is very similar to the plan unveiled by Obama last week).

The final column shows the current Republican plan, a stark contrast to Chafee's bill of 17 years ago.

Ezra Klein puts the chart in context:

Boehner's bill, by contrast, is far, far more conservative (and useless) than what moderate Republicans developed in 1993. Conversely, the Senate [Democratic] bill doesn't look anything like the Clinton plan itself, much less like the more liberal efforts to expand Medicare to all Americans.

We've got a situation in which Democrats are essentially pushing moderate Republican ideas while Republicans push extremely conservative ideas, but because neither the press nor the voters know very much about health-care policy, the fact that Republicans refuse to admit that Democrats have massively compromised their vision is enough to convince people that Democrats aren't compromising.

And Steve Benen:

For all the hysterical whining from today's Republican Party and its right-wing allies, the Democratic plan couldn't be any less radical. Not only is it practically identical to what moderate Republicans wanted nearly 20 years ago, but its basic structure is the same as the plan Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and Tom Daschle were touting last year.

The fact that Americans have been led to believe the Democratic plan is an example of wild-eyed liberalism — a notion largely embraced by much of the major media — speaks poorly of our discourse and capacity to have a meaningful policy debate. It is, however, a reminder of just how effective the right-wing noise machine can be.