Of all the competing news stories coming out of Washington, D.C. in recent days, none can compete with health care.

President Trump’s visit to the Mideast and Europe produced headlines. So have the ongoing probes into connections between members of the Trump campaign and Russian officials before the 2016 presidential election. But health care has a direct impact on more Americans and is a more challenging issue to solve than just about anything facing officials in Washington.

Over the past eight years Republicans took political advantage of ObamaCare’s costs and flaws. But now Republicans are in control of Congress and have offered their own version — the American Health Care Act.

Forced to finally offer their own health care legislation, Republicans will now own all the health care headaches — including lack of coverage, the costs of premiums, deductibles and co-pays and the high price of prescription drugs.

One newspaper article last week warned, “Republicans, get ready for Trumpcare headlines” and offered a few previews: “Premiums to soar by 26 percent;” “Untreated opioid addiction surges;” and “60-year-olds to pay over 50 percent more” under Trumpcare.

Opinion polls reveal that the public has a negative view of the Republican replacement. And the more people learn about it, the more they find to dislike.

Stripping away health care coverage from millions of vulnerable Americans over the next decade, as has been predicted, is widely seen as cruel, immoral and unnecessary.

No wonder Republicans are worried about the possibility of losing control of Congress following the 2018 elections.

Last week’s financial analysis of the House bill by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office only worsens the political worries for Republicans. The CBO predicts 23 million Americans will lose health care coverage over 10 years if the House’s legislation became law. Low-income and older Americans will be hurt the most, CBO predicts. The winners in the GOP plan are healthy and younger people.

Wealthy Americans would be the big winners, too, because their tax bills would be reduced. House Republicans’ plan eliminates the extra taxes on the wealthy and on some medical device makers that helped pay for the expanded coverage under ObamaCare.

Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor and a supporter of ObamaCare, recently spoke out on the House’s attempt to replace the ACA by saying medical costs are damaging American business more than a dysfunctional tax code, which Republicans constantly complain about. Buffet noted that in 1960 corporate taxes were 4 percent of GDP and today the corporate tax share of GDP has fallen to 2 percent. In contrast, health care spending was about 5 percent of GDP in 1960 and today it’s 17 percent of GDP. Health care spending accounts for nearly one-fifth of the American economy and Republicans propose massive changes that will hurt the most vulnerable Americans.

As Buffet noted, and all Americans know, health care costs have exploded in recent decades. The debate over ObamaCare eight years ago revealed the shocking truth that Americans spend more than twice as much for health care, on a per-capita basis, as people in other countries.

Nobody in Congress or the White House — during the ObamaCare debate or now — talks about this. The reason is that excess costs in the American health care industry are profits for health insurance companies, large hospital networks, pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers.

Candidate Donald Trump complained about health care costs. Candidate Trump promised Americans better health care, lower insurance premiums and lower deductibles. Candidate Trump promised to bring down the costs of prescription drugs.

Candidate Trump also seemed to agree with the view of most Americans that nobody should go bankrupt because of sickness or an accident. Yet medical costs are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. In other countries, a serious illness or accident does not force someone into bankruptcy. It should not happen in the United States.

The Senate has a chance to restart the health care debate. It should not bother trying to fix the House bill, but instead should craft its own from scratch.

The Senate bill should start with some foundational ideas — that no American should be bankrupted by an illness or accident, that Americans should not pay twice as much for health care as citizens in other countries, that Americans should not pay three or four times as much for prescription drugs as people in other countries.

The debate should be public and not held behind closed doors. The debate and the solution have to address the fact that health care costs in the United States are more than double those in other advanced Western countries.

Without addressing underlying costs, no progress can be made on health care in America, which was unfinished business before and after the passage of ObamaCare, and remains unfinished business today.