After I read Jim Geraghty’s report on a conversation with Marco Rubio, it briefly looked as though the Republican Senate nominee had embraced an utterly irrational approach to fixing PPACA:

I’m with a small group of reporters in a D.C. coffee shop, chatting with Florida Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio. He just mentioned that there are two parts within the Obamacare legislation that he doesn’t want repealed.* The first is the ban on insurance companies denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and the second is that he thinks that children up to age 26 should be allowed to “buy into” their parents’ coverage.

I definitely think that we need either well-funded high risk pools or a public reinsurance plan to address the problem of pre-existing conditions. James Capretta and Thomas P. Miller have offered a balanced, realistic approach to doing just that in National Affairs. Unfortunately, it will require fundamental tax reforms that future proponents of PPACA demagogued during the presidential campaign to great political effect, undermining the prospects of a fiscally responsible solution.

Suffice it to say, I do not think that the PPACA solution for pre-existing conditions is very wise. So Rubio’s remarks were troubling. Fortunately, Rubio has since clarified his stance to Jim:

Marco believes the health care law should be repealed — all of it. And in its place, we should adopt common sense reforms for which broad agreement exists. Some of these ideas were lumped in with the monstrosity of the final bill. He outlined those today. They were the same ones included in Republican alternatives, including the Coburn plan, which Marco highlighted at the time as a good piece of legislation.

That’s good to know. I can’t say how Rubio would operate as a senator, but the fact that he’s been willing to talk about raising the eligibility age for Social Security and trimming benefits suggests that he deserves to be taken seriously.