By
After years of assurances that his health care plan was just “two weeks” away, Donald Trump was pressed during a debate last year on his elusive blueprint. The Republican famously declared, “I have concepts of a plan.”
The comments were obviously laughable, but they also served as a reminder that the president, a decade into his political career, has never gotten around to sharing a specific idea about reforming the nation’s health care system. So it was almost refreshing to see Trump publish an item to his social media platform over the weekend, pitching a thought from his latest golfing weekend at his glorified country club.
His Saturday morning missive read in part:
I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over. In other words, take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, ObamaCare.
As the weekend progressed, the president leaned into the pitch. “No more money, hundreds of billions of dollars, to the Democrat [sic] supported insurance companies for really bad Obamacare,” he wrote on Saturday afternoon in an all-caps screed. “The money must now go directly to the people, taking the ‘fat cat’ insurance companies out of the corrupt system of healthcare. The people can buy their own, much better policy, for much less money, saving, for themselves, an absolute fortune!!!”
He added on Sunday morning, “PAY THE PEOPLE, NOT THE INSURANCE COMPANIES!” This was soon followed by yet another online statement that said much the same thing.
The context wasn’t lost on anyone. As the longest government shutdown in American history dragged on and congressional Democrats fought to maintain subsidies to keep ACA coverage affordable, Trump effectively presented a counteroffer: Instead of federal spending to make private insurance plans cost less, the president proposed sending that money directly to consumers.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has long struggled with the basics of health care policy, not only endorsed Trump’s suggestion, he also called it “simply brilliant.”
It’s really not.
Despite years of GOP rhetoric about the Affordable Care Act being a “government takeover,” much of the reform model relies on private insurers: The ACA creates marketplaces where consumers receive subsidies to purchase private-sector plans. Democrats have fought to make the subsidies more generous to help consumers, while Republicans have pushed in the opposite direction.
Trump’s idea (to the extent one can call it an idea) is that consumers would be better off if the ACA subsidies were in their own pockets. It wasn’t long, however, before those who know what they’re talking about picked up on the obvious flaw.
“This is, unsurprisingly, nonsensical,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut noted online. “Is he suggesting eliminating health insurance and giving people a few thousand dollars instead? And then when they get a cancer diagnosis they just go bankrupt?”
Quite right. For all intents and purposes, Trump is telling consumers, “Sure, we could make health insurance affordable for you, but we’d prefer to send you a few thousand dollars.”
But at that point, people would either (a) send that money to insurance companies anyway, so they can afford health care coverage; or (b) face a financial crisis in the event of a serious medical issue.
Some congressional Republicans suggested over the weekend that they intend to package Trump’s proposal into legislative form in the coming days. I can hardly wait.