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Wednesday as House Republicans voted to repeal last year's health care overhaul, since the repeal has little chance of passing the Senate. Behind the scenes, however, fears are mounting over what appears to be a more serious threat.

Republicans to try and freeze funding for the health care law. Such an attempt would face the same institutional hurdles as a straight repeal vote: a non-compliant Senate and a president wielding a veto pen.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said Wednesday. "Not because of the debt ceiling. This is beyond the debt ceiling ... If they think they are going to have the end game of their appropriations bills be that they drive health care reform into an early grave ... they are literally setting up a full stop for almost everything we will possibly do this year."

"I am real concerned," Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (D-Texas) said. "We do operate on yearly budgets that could exact great harm if they are dedicated to that proposition. You still have to work with the Senate. So what happens when you reach that kind of impasse? We have this gridlock ... There is no doubt in my mind that the Republican leadership ... has already charted a course.

Ask congressional aides and health care experts what provisions of the law are most likely to succumb to a defunding campaign and you get a variety of answers. Tim Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University, said there are four distinct funding subgroups.

Provisions like Medicaid expansion and premium tax credits, which the law has going into effect only in 2014, "are effectively mandatory spending," Jost said, meaning that "unless the law is changed, the money will be available. It doesn't need to be appropriated on an annual basis."

For elements of the bill like community health centers, the money has been both authorized and appropriated. In other words: the dollars are out the door.

GOP lawmakers may view health care funding as the best avenue towards dismantling the legislation, but the public relations dynamics aren't in their favor. Though the Affordable Care Act may have mixed popularity among the public at large, its individual provisions are remarkably well liked by the country. And if Republicans manage to freeze agency funding, Democrats would have a lot of material with which to tar them.