Well, there's a little more to H.R. 3400 than just 'promoting individually-owned insurance'.

The bill also reinstates the Medicare 45% 'trigger' from Bush's 2003 bill. That is bad for effective Medicare reform in a number of ways: http://www.centeronbudget.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1143

It allows Insurance Companies to operate 'across state lines', thereby allowing them to set up shop in the least rigorously regulated markets.

To finance the bill, the Republican legislation consists of: reducing discretionary spending, rescinding unused funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as well as repealing large healthcare related chunks of that same stimulus including: "increased Medicaid funding, premium assistance for COBRA benefits, and Medicare and Medicaid health information technology funding."

http://covertheuninsured.org/legislative_bill/hr-3400-price

In addition: "Medicare and Medicaid disproportionate share hospital funding would be reduced if [the] bill results in a decrease in the rate of uninsured of more than 8 percentage points)." So, if the ranks of the uninsured are reduced by less than one tenth between 2010 and 2012, the Republicans would start hacking away at DSH funding which is so important for those hospitals who treat the most low-income Americans.

The only upside I can spot from the proposals are incentives to encourage more doctors to enter primary care, and reforms which demand insurance companies cannot deny coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions.

At its core the bill seems to provide subsidies to the uninsured through tax credits, but, as you might expect, the subsidies seem too small (roughly $5,000 for a family, I think) and there is no indivual mandate to buy coverage. Malpractice compensation limits are in there (no surprises).

So, indeed, the bill they were waving about so proudly is concerned with encouraging an individual insurance market, and therefore attempting to create a 'radical' shift in the healthcare market (one President Obama believes would be detrimental to stability and health care security for millions of Americans).

And, as the President said: "don't pay attention to those scary stories about how your [Medicare] benefits will be cut, especially since some of the same folks who are spreading these tall tales have fought against Medicare in the past and just this year supported a budget that would essentially have turned Medicare into a privatized voucher program."

The bill those conservatives were waving around pretends to pay for itself in the long-term by slashing stimulus funding for Health IT and Medicaid, as well as putting pressure on government to make deep cuts into Medicare through an arbitary 45% trigger on general funds in the near future.

On some issues, there is a glimmer of promise, but otherwise its the same old, same old.