Trump-GOP New Healthcare Plan: Kill ACA (Obamacare), Hope for the Best, Run Like Hell, Hide

Arriving Just in Time for 2020 Election Cycle

(Leaked Campaign Ad Poster)

Story here nearly verbatim: The White House is quietly working on a healthcare (secret) policy proposal to replace the ACA.

While it is not clear how far along the process is, work on a proposal has been going on for months. The effort appears to belie criticism that Trump's decision to restart the debate on healthcare, an issue Democrats used to their advantage in the 2018 midterms, was an error committed without forethought.

From one conservative health policy analyst said the W/H has reached out to numerous think tanks, e.g., the Heritage Foundation, the Mercatus Center, and the Hoover Institute, and added: “The White House, mainly through the National Economic Council, has been engaged on thinking about health care reform for a while now, and they have been engaged with a group of center-right health policy groups to talk about various proposals and ideas”

Trump said recently that the Republican plan would soon become the “party of healthcare.” His remarks surprised many Republicans in light of the many failures to repeal Obamacare since 2019, and the drubbing the GOP took in the 2018 midterms on saving Obamacare, which is still very popular despite GOP 54 attempts to repeal it.

*Note: Many Republicans insist that they won't act on legislation until Trump comes up with a plan while Trump said the administration was “working on a plan now” — but added there was “no great rush to roll out a proposal and added that he was waiting for the courts to repeal the ACA.” He also claimed he would have a much better plan than Obamacare: and concluded: “The health care’s going very well.”

Policy leaders at several conservative think tanks confirmed that a healthcare plan is indeed the works. They said a proposal would take concepts from the Graham-Cassidy bill, by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and the Health Care Choices which was signed by many conservative policy leaders.

That support also includes the Heritage Foundation and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA). One analyst said the proposal would most likely be brought up in the Senate first. 

Heritage Foundation Director of Domestic Policy Studies Marie Fishpaw noted that the president has already included concepts from the Health Care Choices proposal in his 2020 budget, and she added: “It would lower premiums by up to a third, lowering costs while also protecting people with pre-existing conditions, would replace Federal payments to insurance companies with grants for each state, giving individual states more leeway to determine how to use the money.”

(Note: And, we would have to hope money does not run out… a weak selling points are block grants and similar for vouchers that the GOP loves as they tend to be tightfisted when it comes to Federal dollars).

Another conservative policy analyst said the White House is definitely “exploring the healthcare issue, but does not seem ready to unveil a proposal yet,” adding: “I don’t think there’s anything that’s fully formed. I think a lot of the devil’s in the details.”

A spokeswoman for Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR) announced his own wide-ranging health reform plan, confirmed that the White House is “serious about working on health care, but said the lawmakers would take the initiative on the issue,” adding: “Most likely, the effort will be from Congress.”

Trump has already asked a group of Senate Republicans, including John Barrasso (R-WY), Rick Scott (R-FL), and Cassidy (R-LA) to come up with a replacement for Obamacare. 

Other Senate Republicans, including Sens. Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Kennedy (LA), and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), have all indicated an unwillingness to get moving on the issue until Trump puts forth his own proposal.

Kennedy said: “I’m anxious to see what the White House is going to recommend in terms of a healthcare delivery system that looks like somebody designed the damn thing on purpose.”

My 2 Cents: History shows the GOP can’t deliver on providing decent health care and not likely this time, either, plus they have one tune since the ACA passed in 2010: Repeal it.

So, stay tuned, and thanks for stopping by.