It boggles the senses to learn that upward of $120 million will be spent on Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate campaign between incumbent Republican Pat Toomey and Democratic challenger Katie McGinty.

And for all that money spent on publicity, what have we learned about the candidates?

Well, Toomey had a successful career on Wall Street, and he once owned controlling interest in a bank. McGinty and some of her supporters associate both with being out of touch with common people.

And McGinty made millions in consulting fees from alternative energy firms that she’d helped to secure big state contracts. Toomey ads portray the transactions as ethically questionable.

The overriding message is that it’s more effective to focus on your opponent’s apparent faults than to play up your own strengths, or to discuss your stand on key issues.

It has become the political status quo these days, with an incredibly nasty presidential campaign setting the pace. The October surprise no longer suffices. Now there are “black swan” developments emerging almost daily, like the now infamous WikiLeaks daily e-mail dumps.

Meantime, true issues like health care costs are getting lost in the shadows of these multimillion-dollar political morality dramas.

In Pennsylvania, Obamacare’s fourth round of annual open enrollment begins this week, with steep rate hikes and fewer choices projected for the 440,000 state residents who buy their insurance through healthcare.gov.

Statewide, the average benchmark price will rise by 34 percent, to $462 a month, though that’s still lower than the national average of $543. About 75 percent of Pennsylvania customers qualify for a tax subsidy that caps their premium, shielding them from the rate hikes. But that means one out of every four can expect to pay more next year.

The insurance participating in the ObamaCare markets also compete for employer/employee health insurance business. The rates for each have an impact on the other, and insurers are under pressure to contain costs in both markets.

Some insurers, including Aetna and United Healthcare, are dropping out as ObamaCare participants in 2017, seeing too little profit and too much risk in an environment of skyrocketing premium rates.

Needless to say, ObamaCare is on shaky ground as it completes its third year of existence. There are about 11.1 million people currently enrolled, about half the 22 million projected for enrollment after three years. The enrollment numbers are short on young people and wealthier older people, demographics that were said to be crucial to propping up less healthy populations whose actual medical costs tend to be higher.

Democrats — most notably McGinty and Clinton — say they can adjust ObamaCare and make it viable. They have not offered details about what adjustments they would make or how much they would cost. Both have suggested movement toward a single-payer health care system — socialized medicine.

Toomey, Donald Trump and other Republicans say they’ll repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something more reflective of a free market. They have not presented a detailed plan showing how and where to contain costs.

Two parties, two very different intentions for health care being put before the voters. One issue alone would have made a great race.

Instead, we’ve been blasted incessantly with reminders of the candidates’ sins and deviations.

It makes us wonder: if either party had a solid plan for delivering low-cost, competent health care, that $120 million wasted on frivolous attack ads could have been used instead to lay out the candidates’ intentions.