Holman Jenkins has a suggestion for a Republican “fix” for Obamacare:

What can be done is Congress creating a new option in the form of a national health insurance charter under which insurers could design new low-cost policies free of mandated benefits imposed by ObamaCare and the 50 states that many of those losing their individual policies today surely would find attractive.

What’s the first thing the new nationally chartered insurers would do? Rush out cheap, high-deductible policies, allaying some of the resentment that the ObamaCare mandate provokes among the young, healthy and footloose affluent.

These folks could buy the minimalist coverage that (for various reasons) makes sense for them. They wouldn’t be forced to buy excessive coverage they don’t need to subsidize the old and sick…

Because such a move could be sold as expanding the options under ObamaCare and lessening the burden of an unpopular mandate, it always had potential to draw Democratic support…

And, yes, this would also blow up the disingenuous financial engine of ObamaCare. This is a feature not a bug.

The ObamaCare exchanges would devolve into refuges for those who are medically uninsurable. But this seems increasingly likely to happen anyway. The federal government, having assumed the job of subsidizing these people, should do so honestly and openly.

So, what Jenkins seems to be proposing is not to repeal Obamacare (which probably wouldn’t be politically feasible anyway—yet) but to add a catastrophic insurance option free of the mandatory coverages such as maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, pediatric oral and vision care, and a host of others, that have raised the cost of Obamacare and which many people don’t want or need. He realizes that a lot of people would gravitate towards that catastrophic option instead of the plans Obamacare now offers, and the exchanges would basically become subsidized high-risk pools—somewhat like the ones the vast majority of states had to begin with before Obamacare led to those pools’ cancellation.

There’s an excellent argument to be made, though, that the GOP should hold fast to a repeal rather than a fix. There’s also some doubt as to whether the Senate would pass anything the GOP proposed, even now that the political climate has become far more hostile to Obamacare. And of course one must always remember that Obama has veto power, and it’s hard to imagine him not using it on a bill like this one. But there’s something to be said for Republicans taking charge and actually designing and passing a remedy that could help people with the problems they are now facing in the health insurance markets.

Republicans have been demonized for a long time as not caring about those without health insurance, although some Republicans have been suggesting a number of solutions for years that have been ignored. Actually passing something concrete would go far towards getting the public to realize that conservatives do have solutions to these things; they are just different solutions than liberals have come up with.

However, I’m not sure that Jenkins’ suggestion would do anything to solve the problem connected with the mandatory coverage of those with pre-existing conditions combined with the weakness of the penalty for not buying insurance (or the penalty’s possible unconstitutionality, despite whatever Justice Roberts might think). That problem is inherent in Obamacare, or in any scheme that mandates coverage of pre-existing conditions. Either penalties are weak (or non-existent) and premiums rise, or penalties must be strong. The first wrecks havoc with the health insurance market premiums and the second with liberty, especially if instituted at the federal level.