Nobody on the Republican side has talked about a free market in healthcare, not even the President. It's all been replacing Obamacare with another government program. The last proposal failed, Trump hasn't released his new replacement plan, and the GOP is attacking almost the only universally liked feature.
There are other ways to address the pre-existing conditions issue, but yes, the GOP needs to have its story right on it.
Which, I think we can agree, they don't.
Actually a number of the GOP have—right up until they had control of the presidency, house and senate going into 2017.
And agreed. Though Trump sometimes campaigned on free market healthcare reforms, he seems to default to telling us what great “plans” he’s going to provide us. It’s an area where he unfortunately seems to revert to his inner Democrat. But of course he’s fighting so much and being so great in so many other areas.
Those who have had their rates skyrocket because of this preexisting coverage aren’t necessarily such great fans of it. And the GOP’s more enlightened side, including Trump, has been advocating and moving to minimize the preexisting issue by allowing the small business and individual pooled plans that Obamacare expressly made illegal. Then, there have been plans of allowing states to have (or go back to, if they had them previously) high-risk pools for the remaining tough cases.
There messaging hasn’t been good, I agree.