The GOP's Obamacare Agenda Just Reemerged From Hiding

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Health care has been invisible for most of the presidential campaign. That changed at last week’s presidential debate, when Donald Trump answered a question about his intentions on the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).

First Trump claimed to have “saved” the 2010 health care law despite having spent the first year of his presidency trying to repeal it. Then he promised that he had “concepts of a plan” for replacing it.

Trump didn’t specify what these concepts were, which was nothing new . The Republican presidential nominee has been promising a mythical, never-defined plan that will provide “great health care for much less money” since he first started talking about repealing Obamacare in his 2016 presidential campaign.

But over the weekend, his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, said Trump actually did have an alternative. During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Vance said Trump had in mind a “deregulatory agenda so that people can choose a health care plan that fits them.”

Americans have different health care needs, Vance explained, so it makes sense to “promote some more choice in our health care system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pools, that actually makes it harder for people to make the right choices for their families.”

Those of us who follow health care policyclosely understood immediately what he meant.

At any one time, most people aren’t spending a lot on medical care because most people are in relatively good health. The vast majority of costs come from the minority who are getting intensive or ongoing treatment