The White House released what the Trump administration called a “Great Healthcare Plan” on Thursday. But less than 24 hours later, President Donald Trump failed to answer basic questions about it.
Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz almost immediately downgraded the announcement, telling reporters that the “plan” was actually a “broad framework.”
But when Trump was asked Friday how the proposal would help people with premiums going up—thanks to his own “One Big, Beautiful Bill”—he had a different take.
“It’s going to be tremendous,” Trump said. “We’re going to get tremendous reductions, as you know—if you look at medicines and prescription drugs, they’re going to come down by numbers that have never been seen before.”
Trump’s answer echoed the “concept” of a health care plan for which he was mocked during the 2024 election cycle.
But his vague response is in line with almost two decades of GOP spin on health care issues, ever since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law by former President Barack Obama in 2010.
Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz
While the ACA created health care exchanges, mandated coverage, and prevented insurance companies from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions, Republicans have spent the ensuing 16 years failing to provide a counterproposal to the public.
Instead, the GOP has devoted its energy to backing policy and legislation meant to undermine the health care law, including numerous attempts to repeal the ACA—which would strip health care coverage from millions of Americans.
Still, Trump and other Republicans have been unable to deliver even on that promise, facing revolt from the public and even within the Republican caucus, with three GOP senators joining Democrats in 2017 to oppose Trump’s big repeal crusade.
The right has spent decades opposing health care reform efforts, even slamming Medicare and Medicaid as attempts at socialism when they were first proposed in the 1960s. The GOP “plan” has been more about allowing ailing Americans to die quickly, rather than provide them access to health care and insurance.
Trump has been promising a “terrific” and “great” health care plan since he first began running for president in 2015, and he’s repeatedly said that he would have a plan to offer the public in “two weeks.” It has been more than ten years.
A cartoon by Clay Jones.
When Trump has offered purported solutions, they have more often resembled proposals like the so-called TrumpRX announcement made last September.
The Trump administration touted agreements with drug companies that were supposed to lower prices, but all 16 companies who signed onto the program raised the costs of their drugs this month.
While Republicans near two decades of health care failure, the public increasingly has voiced its approval of the ACA. In a Gallup poll released in December, 57% of the public—including 15% of Republicans—said that they approve of Obama’s legislation.
That’s an all-time high of support for the bill. And the best part? Americans didn’t have to wait “two weeks” for it.
