The flaws in ‘Republicare’ are something we can all get behind

At Thursday’s debate, we finally got the outline of a Republican replacement for Obamacare.

Marco Rubio said your company would give you what amounts to healthcare bucks.

“And you can use that money only for healthcare, but you can use it to fund healthcare any way you want; or, a private plan from any company in any state in the country,” he explained. “And if you don’t have that you would have a refundable tax credit.”

Related: Republicans need some honey before they bite into a Supreme Court deal

So you buy your own health care, and if you can’t afford to, you get a refundable tax credit from the government. That sounds familiar.

And Donald Trump agreed with Rubio, especially about letting any state sell any plan. But he would go even further.

“I want to keep pre-existing condition,” Trump said.

Where have I heard that before?

But if you’re going to do that and cover everybody, regardless of how sick they are, insurance companies will require everybody to buy insurance. Trump says that is “100 percent” wrong.

OK, no mandate.

To summarize: this plan, which I guess we could call Republicare, allows you to choose your insurance from a marketplace &#8211 like Obamacare &#8211 except there are no national standards for comparing policies. You’d be buying from 50 different states setting 50 different standards. But because there’s no mandate, you wouldn’t bother buying insurance at all until you got sick, and then you’d just let the tax credits pay for it.

I LOVE it!