Democrats may have invented new bells and whistles, but their thinking hasn’t changed much since 1993. Back then, they believed there was a “health care crisis,” and the solution required big-footed feds to stomp all over the existing system. What they didn’t take into account is the fact that millions of Americans were satisfied with their health care. The Democrats’ response now is to say, “but you can keep your doctor.” That’s nice, but it still misses the point.

Today, among the insured — a group far larger and more likely to vote than the uninsured — people actually like the status quo. A recent Kaiser Foundation poll on health care found that 88 percent of those with insurance thought their coverage was good or excellent while 93 percent were happy with their quality of care. And 64 percent said they were happy with their health care costs. Meanwhile, a recent Gallup Poll found that trust in the federal government is the lowest ever recorded. This is not quite the kindling for revolutionary change many liberals think is out there.

The GOP understands this. As Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center recently noted in the Weekly Standard, the Republican candidates as well as the White House have collectively pushed a number of reforms that would expand consumer choice without necessarily expanding government. By changing the way health care is taxed and using government purchasing power more efficiently, they aim toward decoupling the New Deal-era system of using big business to provide health care. Some propose following what Mitt Romney did when he was governor in Massachusetts and offering subsidies to those who can’t afford insurance.

None of these plans is perfect, but all recognize that the federal government cannot simply impose a solution without creating the sorts of problems that plague all other single-payer systems — rationing, long lines and ever-higher taxes. Moreover, these approaches are probably more appealing to the vast swath of voters who don’t live inside the Democratic bubble.

And that’s the irony of Hillary Clinton’s claim to have learned so much from her last failure, which cost Democrats the Congress and largely hobbled the liberal aspirations of the her husband’s presidency. If the most famous champion of nationalized health care in U.S. history wins the nomination and voters start paying attention, they might easily conclude that Hillary and her party haven’t learned anything at all.