I agree with Steve Chapman completely on this, Republicans in Congress share the blame for their failure to do anything about health care while they were in control. Their proposals could have been enacted while they had control:

His GOP critics in Congress, after all, have proposals to help the uninsured and curb health care costs. During his speech to Congress Wednesday, they waved their own bill at him. But for four years under President Bush, we had not only a Republican president but also a Republican Congress.
And what happened? Nothing. Republicans left health care reform to wait until the Democrats regained power, and now the Democrats have.

They didn’t see it as a problem that they could address but many Americans have been struggling for years to afford health care insurance and there are many ways that Congress could have used free-market solutions to make insurance affordable, like providing more competition in each state by allowing groups of people to come together (on their own without the government) and buy health care from providers across the nation, not just the ones that offer it in their state. And also tort reform which would drive down the cost of malpractice insurance.
But now the Democrats are pushing for solutions which put the control in the hands of government and Republicans only have themselves to blame for not doing anything when these plans have been floating around for years. Now, their plans are useless and they sit on the sidelines hoping the moderate Democrats in the Senate don’t cave and vote for the public option. Good job, Republicans, playing defense when you could have sidestepped this by playing offense when you had the ball.