It’s Hard to Decide What Part of the GOP Platform Is Worst

But where does that extra 22 percent go? Certainly not to the patient. The program generates an estimated $75 billion annually in overpayments to insurers. Advantage has also come under fire for refusing to cover a variety of medical procedures. A national commission last year found no evidence that Medicare Advantage delivered coverage that was any better than regular Medicare.

“Any honest agenda for improving health care,” said the 2016 Republican platform, “must start with repeal of the dishonestly named Affordable Care Act of 2010: Obamacare.” That highly specific language is gone, and in its place is a promise to expand “Affordable Healthcare and prescription drug options,” whatever that means. In the 2016 campaign Trump pledged to replace Obamacare with “something terrific.” Eight years later, the Republican Party still can’t tell you what that would be.

The 2024 platform’s education chapter is mostly a declaration of culture war. On its single page the phrase “parental rights” appears four times. “Parental rights” is culture-war-ese for “censorship.” Censorship of school libraries was up 33 percent in the 2022-2023 school year, the last for which data is available, according to PEN America. These empowered parents pulled more than 3,000 books from school shelves—and the GOP’s education chapter promises more of the same. Republicans, the platform says, “will oppose politicized education models” and eliminate “Leftwing propaganda” and “inappropriate political indoctrination.” (Apparently appropriate political indoctrination may continue.) Specifically, the GOP will “stop schools from discriminating on the basis of Race.” If this last assertion surprises you, keep in mind that Republicans judge the aggrieved group to be Caucasian children forced against their parents’ will to learn about slavery, Jim Crow, etc.