Democratic candidates have spent much of their campaigns so far brandishing their plans for healthcare reform. Some, like former Representative Beto O’Rourke and former Vice President Joe Biden, want to create opt-in programs that wouldn’t require people to join a public insurance option. Others, like Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), have suggested completely or nearly eliminating private insurance. Indeed, the Vermont senator argues that private insurance should be totally relegated to covering unnecessary procedures like elective plastic surgery.

Here’s the problem with his idea: private insurance for cosmetic surgery doesn’t exist, and that’s actually good. As it turns out, policymakers could learn a thing or two from the cosmetic surgery system.

As New York Times reporter Margot Sanger-Katz wrote in early July, “there is no private market for cosmetic surgery insurance.” It’s true — almost all cosmetic procedures are paid for out-of-pocket, and cosmetic surgery is one of precious few healthcare areas that has just gotten cheaper over the past 20 years.

Why? Well, it’s probably because it’s one of the only healthcare areas where the American markets are allowed to work.

The purpose of insurance is to spread risk over a large group of people so that a much smaller group of people can be helped when needed. It wouldn’t make sense for health insurance companies to offer supplemental insurance for procedures like cosmetic surgery. If they did, only people looking to get facelifts, for example, would buy the supplemental insurance that covers facelifts. In other words, there’s no need for risk management.

So, the markets for elective procedures like cosmetic surgery and LASIK eye treatment work like normal markets for goods and services, with patients paying out-of-pocket for services with easily-visible prices. As a result, prices have dropped the past two decades; meanwhile, general healthcare costs have risen dramatically.

Mark Perry, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, has noted that from 1998 to 2016, the average price of cosmetic procedures fell relative to overall inflation. For instance, as New York Times opinion writer David Brooks wrote, over the past two decades the price of corrective laser eye surgery has fallen from $2,200 an eye to $250. Similarly, the price of botox injections fell from $424 to $376, even before accounting for inflation. In that same time period, the overall price of medical services rose by over 100 percent.

Now, here’s what cosmetic surgery gets right and what Democrats seem to have trouble understanding: health insurance isn’t healthcare.

Private health insurance in the U.S. is comprehensive, covering a wide range of medical services, not just unpredictable and high-cost ones. So health insurance is different than, say, car insurance, where consumers cover routine services out-of-pocket and third-party insurers only cover catastrophes. But American medical insurance is so comprehensive that politicians assume any procedure, even completely non-essential ones like cosmetic plastic surgery, ought to be covered by insurance. And that’s why the price tag for health insurance is sky-high.

As it turns out, a functioning price system can work in at least some healthcare markets. In the age of the internet, cosmetic surgery patients can simply check the cost of a procedure online without a thought about insurance. As a result, prices have fallen to toe the line for patient demand. On the other hand, patients who need other procedures are left in the dark. Prices for them remain both mysterious and high. It’s not a coincidence that these two go together.

But there’s room in the current system for transparent prices. Right now, patients might pay hundreds of dollars more or less in one hospital than they would in another in the same metropolitan area. Additionally, there’s often no correlation between the real cost of the procedure and the price the patient pays. Many procedures are neither emergency services nor cosmetic ones — meaning that patients don’t have easy access to the price until after the fact. According to a recent paper in the American Economic Journal, price transparency could lower patient prices between 10 and 17 percent. But to maximize those savings, the U.S. would have to move away from comprehensive insurance.

If Republicans would be a little more inventive in their healthcare strategies, they could advance their cause by advocating for a cheaper, market-driven healthcare system. If the cosmetic surgery industry can tap into such a sweet deal, why can’t the GOP?

American healthcare has a cost problem and an access problem, and the conversation since President Obama took office has focused inordinately on access. But solving the access problem doesn’t solve the cost problem, while solving the cost problem does solve the access problem. If Republicans could take on the way medical care is priced, then they could say they finally stepped in and did something about an issue which the Democrats seem doomed to fail at—actually making American healthcare affordable.

Alex Muresianu is a writer whose work has appeared in Arc Digital, Reason, National Review, The Washington Examiner, The Kansas City Star, and other places. Follow him on Twitter @ahardtospell.