House Republican leaders plan to deliver this week on their vow to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. It’s a symbolic exercise, since the Senate and Obama won’t go along. The real question is whether Americans will get the “thoughtful consideration of the health care bill” House leaders are promising.

Nothing would serve the nation better than a healthy dose of truth telling from both parties, something that has been sadly lacking in this ferocious political debate.

House Speaker John Boehner should begin by admitting the fallacy of his contention that repealing the health care law would not add billions to the deficit. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office made that clear, saying, to the contrary, that repeal would drive up the deficit by $230 billion over the first decade — not to mention adding 32 million to the ranks of the uninsured by 2019.

Obama, for his part, should acknowledge that a health care overhaul won’t be complete until the nation addresses its out-of-control medical costs, which Demo-crats have yet to do in a concrete form. And that will likely mean much smarter use of federal dollars to treat chronic diseases, or some form of rationing.

The Republicans’ “repeal and replace” plan looks more perilous for them than it seemed just a few months ago. The tide seems to be turning on Americans’ feelings about the overhaul.

Opposition continues to drop, as the most recent AP-GfK poll demonstrates. The sharpest decline, interestingly enough, is among Republicans, whose opposition fell from 61 percent to 49 percent. Only 25 percent of Americans now believe the law should be repealed altogether, according to the poll. Some 43 percent would like to see it do more.

The benefits are becoming clearer every day. Prior to passage, about one of every three people age 19 to 26 did not have health care insurance. Now, they’re eligible to be covered under their parents’ policies. About 600,000 California children with pre-existing medical conditions are guaranteed access to coverage. More than 500,000 California small businesses are eligible for tax credits on premiums, which will help decrease the number of small businesses — about 50 percent — that do not offer health insurance to employees.

When the state gets its first-of-its-kind insurance exchange up and running in 2014, the number of uninsured in California will be cut by more than half, improving residents’ health and cutting down on the number of costly emergency room visits by the uninsured.

More than 50 million Americans are now uninsured and waiting for the law to fully take effect in three years. Millions more know the overhaul will be the only thing keeping them from losing insurance if they are laid off or have a debilitating illness.

Perhaps because they know repeal — at the moment — is more a rallying cry than a real possibility, Republicans have so far been cagey about the “replace” part of their plan. As this debate continues, Americans should demand that both parties be forthcoming about the realities of their plans and insist that changes benefit all Americans, not just those who already have insurance and access to the nation’s finest doctors and medical care.