Is covering the uninsured ‘not the issue’?

Pressed repeatedly by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace about the GOP health care alternatives, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (in photo), R-Ky., finally responded that reducing the number of people who are uninsured is “not the issue” for the GOP. Neither apparently is prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions (which was a main reason for the individual mandate). “As the conversation turns to the specifics in the law, and to the fact that Republicans wouldn’t replace them with anything,” wrote Greg Sargent of the Washington Post, “Republicans’ best hope will be that the law’s generalized unpopularity will enable them to persuade the American people that the question of whose policies would actually cover the uninsured is ‘not the issue.’”