Donald Trump’s Big Lie on Health Care

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


I realize that criticizing a Donald Trump policy is pointless, but Trump’s health care “plan” deserves a bit more attention. Say what you will about his immigration policies, but at least his written plan more-or-less matched his rhetoric. His health care plan doesn’t even come close. Here are its six proposals:

  1. Allow insurance companies to sell policies across state lines. Whatever you think of this idea, it only makes sense if you can truly buy a policy that’s regulated by another state. Ramesh Ponnuru: “But the plan says that people should be allowed to buy insurance out of state only ‘as long as the plan purchased complies with state requirements.’ That defeats the whole purpose of the reform, and means either that Trump is coming out for the status quo or that whoever wrote his plan garbled it.” Or that Trump has no idea what he’s talking about.
  1. Allow individuals to “fully deduct health insurance premium payments from their tax returns.” This may or may not be a good idea in concept, but implementing it as a deduction makes it meaningless for nearly everyone at the median wage or below. They already pay little or no income tax, so a deduction does them no good. This is why other Republicans have proposed doing this as a tax credit, which would benefit anyone. Even conservatives agree about this: “That’s not going to help,” said Joe Antos, a conservative health policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
  1. Allow individuals to use HSAs. Individuals have been allowed to set up HSAs since 2003. The only new wrinkle in Trump’s plan is that an HSA can be used by any family member. This is trivial.
  1. Price transparency. This is fine. It won’t do much to improve health care, but it’s a good idea.
  1. Block grant Medicaid. This would accomplish nothing except, probably, to make health care worse. States tend to do everything they can to use Medicaid dollars for non-health purposes, and giving them total control over Medicaid would only make this worse. Also, it would eliminate the automatic increase in Medicaid spending during recessions, when it’s needed most. Overall, this proposal would almost certainly result in less Medicaid spending and less effective Medicaid spending.
  1. Allow importation of prescription drugs. This is fine.

Trump has been extravagant in his promises about health care: “I would end Obamacare and replace it with something terrific, for far less money for the country and for the people.” He’s said that he would cover everyone. He’s said he would cover pre-existing conditions. He’s said he wouldn’t let people die in the streets. He’s said he would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

His plan includes none of that. He just flatly hasn’t kept any of his promises. Instead he’s offered up something that looks like a fourth grader cribbed it from other Republican plans without really understanding what they said. Even by GOP standards—which is a very low bar—his health care plan offers virtually nothing of substance. It’s completely hollow.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate