Republicans have had fifteen years to come up with a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, and all they've done in the meantime is undermine it and do their best to destroy it. Their replacement is the same as it ever was -- go back to the days where insurers could deny coverage and force people into worthless junk plans that aren't worth the piece of paper they're written on.

Here's GOP Rep. Andy Barr on this Saturday's Fox & Friends Weekend, touting their upcoming "listening sessions," lying about the difference in the actual cost difference between employer-sponsored plans (where the employer generally picks up most of the cost) and the ACA marketplace plans, and pushing for HSAs as a solution to rising costs, which many say would collapse the ACA marketplace, which is what they've wanted all along.

JENKINS: What can we expect this week as you guys begin these listening sessions? Where is this headed?

BARR: Well, President Trump is absolutely right, and Republicans support lowering the cost of healthcare. President Trump supports lowering the cost of healthcare, and we always have, but the central irony of this shutdown that we just went through is that it was basically and largely motivated by a Democrat temper tantrum over the failure of their signature healthcare law, Obamacare.

It was a breathtaking admission that the Affordable Care Act, in fact, is totally unaffordable. Premiums in the Obamacare exchanges, since Obamacare went into effect, have grown over 60 percent faster than premiums in employer-sponsored plans, so look, what we're going to be doing this week is getting to work and continuing to advocate for patient-centered health care that puts control in the hands of consumers and patients as opposed to insurance companies and the government.

JENKINS: You know, indeed it's remarkable because I remember in 2010 being 2009 being the reporter that covered this day after day after day, and then speaker Nancy Pelosi famously saying "We've got to pass the bill so we'll find out what's in it." They didn't know what it would become from the very get-go. You had President Obama repeatedly saying "If you like your health care you can keep it." That turned out not to be the case.

Now fast forward to where we are 15 years later, a headline reads "House GOP moderates urge deal on expiring health care subsidies." Inside the Bloomberg article it says "The bipartisan group asked that representatives from both parties in the House be included in talks aimed at averting drastic premium increases that would affect more than 20 million Americans. Without a deal, the lawmakers wrote, millions will lose their health care coverage because they will no longer be able to afford it due to rising premiums that on average would more than double." But it occurs to me congressman people are already losing their health care.

BARR: Well they have an Obamacare has forced people into higher lower quality plans. What we need again is patient-centered health care that gives these tax credits to individuals and consumers so that they can go purchase the health plans that are right for them and their families, whether that's on an exchange, off an exchange, use them to fund a health savings account. Put control back in the hands of the consumers so that we have a functional market.

The problem with the Affordable Care Act, ultimately, of Obamacare, was that it pushed a lot of these Americans into these heavily regulated exchanges. And so, all these subsidies did was to mask the true cost of Obamacare, and actually subsidize premium inflation.

We don't need to be subsidizing more premium inflation. We need to be forcing competition and choice among health insurers, and give power back to the American people, into the hands of consumers and patients. That's what will drive down the cost of healthcare.

President Trump has been laser focused on lowering the cost of living for Americans, and this is just another example of the president's successful approach to bringing down the cost of living for the American people.

Medicare for all where everyone is in one big pool, and not just having the older and sicker people forced onto the government run health insurance would bring costs way down, but Republicans will never go for that because they're more interested in protecting the profits of the insurance industry, while they pretend to care about the issue as Barr did here.