Health care fades as campaign issue
In early October, with his poll numbers stubbornly lagging his Democratic opponent's, Ed Gillespie did something almost no other Republican candidate has done this campaign season. Gillespie — a lobbyist, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and now a Senate candidate in Virginia — unveiled a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.
The proposal would use tax credits and a federally funded "high risk pool" to cover the uninsured. Almost no one questioned its seriousness, but almost no one took up the cause.
"The ACA is bad policy," Gillespie said in an interview.
In a campaign season that was supposed to be dominated by attacks on the health care law, few Republicans made the law's repeal a centerpiece — and fewer still offered an alternative. Besides Gillespie, Mike McFadden, the GOP challenger to Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., also tried. Like Gillespie in his race against Sen. Mark Warner, McFadden has little chance of winning.
That most likely leaves no one to claim a mandate for a new direction if Republicans win control of the Senate next week.
"I'm here raising my hand saying we've got a health care problem in this country. I want straight talk," McFadden said. "The idea that you repeal, everything goes away and we go back to the old system? The old system is bad. We have to address it."
New York Times
