Well, I’m not getting rid of all of health care reform. Of course there are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place. One is to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get coverage.

The last time somebody from Romneyland promised federal help for people who can’t get health insurance, conservatives like Rush Limbaugh were furious. (How dare Romney suggest government help people with serious medical conditions!) This time, an anonymous Romney campaign aide quickly reassured conseravtives, via a statement to National Review, that Romney had no intention of keeping Obamacare’s requirements that insurers cover all people: “in a competitive environment, the marketplace will make available plans that include coverage for what there is demand for. He was not proposing a federal mandate to require insurance plans to offer those particular features.” Later an aide (perhaps the same one) explained that, during the Gregory interview, Romney was merely restating his previous position: That people with pre-existing medical conditions should have access to comprehensive insurance, so long as they already have coverage.

As best as I can tell—and, with Romney, you can never be 100 percent sure—the aide is correct. Romney, like most Republicans, has long favored “continuous” coverage protection. But, for complicated reasons that I explained a few months ago, this protection is relatively weak unless it includes the sort of substantial regulation and subsidies that Romney, like most Republicans, has opposed. As a result, such protection would do very little for many of the people who need it most. Among other things, as Sarah Kliff points out today, “There are tens of millions of Americans who lack continuous coverage.” (A typical example would be somebody who lost a job, couldn’t keep making premium payments, and let coverage lapse.)

For people in this situation, Romney and the Republicans have traditionally said they favor coverage through “high-risk pools.” But high-risk pools are basically substandard policies: Although they cover catastrophic expenses, they leave people exposed to huge out-of-pocket costs. They also tend to be underfunded, because they cost a lot of money but serve only a small number of people. As Jonathan Chait notes, it’s almost impossible to imagine that Romney and Ryan, who have promised massive reductions in domestic spending, would supply these programs with the money they need to operate adequately.

So what would this mean in practice? Imagine for a second that you have cancer, diabetes, or Parkinson’s. With the coverage you’re likely to get form a high-risk pool, chances are that you’ll continue to struggle with medical bills. You’ll end up going into financial distress, just to cover your health are costs, unless you decide to start skipping treatment. And that’s obviously not a very good idea. These policies are better than nothing, for sure. But what you really need is comprehensive insurance and way to pay for it—in other words, the kind of protection that the Affordable Care Act will provide, starting in 2014, unless Romney and the Republicans repeal it.