Dem
50
GOP
50
Donald Trump may have concepts of a plan for healthcare, but Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) has an actual plan. Only it is not his. It is Paul Ryan's. It's pretty simple at its core: Healthcare can be made cheaper by not providing it to people who are sick. If you want to dive into the details, this is how it would work. Private insurance companies would be allowed to refuse to enroll people with pre-existing conditions. The companies could decide what conditions were grounds for refusal. The result would be that the companies would then be insuring mostly healthy people, so they could lower premiums to attract new customers. Competition among companies would determine how much customers would pay. It is estimated that about 80% of the population would be covered this way. For these people, health insurance would be cheaper than it is now.
What about the 20% of the population with serious chronic illnesses? In RyanCare, the government would run high-risk pools these people could join. They would be funded by annual appropriations from Congress. This would allow Congress to determine every year exactly what it wanted to spend on health care. A minor consequence of this plan is that the available money would be finite. If it were all gone by August and a patient put in a claim in September, the government wouldn't pay. Instead it would advise the patient to try to get sick next year before April or May, before the money ran out.
How would this play politically? Possibly fairly well. Something like 80% of the population would get good private insurance for less than they are paying now. Republicans would take credit for lowering the cost of health care. For the other 20%, they probably wouldn't be so happy and wouldn't vote for the Republicans. Nearly all politicians can count to 100%. They will take 80% over 20% any day.
In addition to his healthcare plan, Vance also has a campaign strategy. At events, he takes questions from local reporters before he takes questions from national ones (if he takes them at all). Local ones go easier on candidates. Nevertheless, as soon as the reporter begins asking a question, Vance cues the booing so the reporter is drowned out and can't ask the question. Vance has said about this: "We're having fun. You're allowed to ask your question; they're allowed to tell you how they think about it. That's OK. This is America."
If the reporter does manage to ask a question, the crowd jeers. When Vance "answers" it, even if the "answer" doesn't relate to the question, the crowd cheers. One reporter described the crowd as the Greek chorus in an Aeschylus play. It is there to amplify the emotion, not to explain anything. Does it work? It seems to be an improvement for the wannabe VP, because Vance has had trouble connecting with crowds and getting them to boo reporters provides a common denominator between Vance and "the people." (V)