What Hardcore Conservatives Really Want for Health Care

To its critics, Republicans’ Obamacare replacement bill is not just a bad idea, it seems to reveal a dearth of ideas. The impression among some liberals (and even conservatives) is that, given seven years to come up with an alternative to Obamacare, the best the GOP could do was to water down the Affordable Care Act and throw in some personal-responsibility measures for flair.

But in fact, some hardcore conservatives do have pretty radical health-care ideas—they’re just not anything like the American Health Care Act. Over the course of several recent interviews, the Heritage Foundation’s Ed Haislmaier shared his vision for a fully market-based health system, in which people subscribe to their doctors like they would Netflix and low-performing general hospitals get crushed by scrappy, stand-alone specialty practices. Access to doctors and treatments would hinge on whatever the “the market” deemed