TrumpCare's coming! What kind of garbage in a gold box awaits us?
The Washington Post's Robert Costa published the gist of an interview with Trump last night in which Trump claimed that his administration is putting the finishing touches on a health reform plan that would provide universal access to affordable, low deductible coverage. This is so apparently out of keeping with existing Republican ACA replacement plans that it's hard to know what to make of it. Here are three possibilities:
1) Trump's plan will depend heavily on "mini-med" plans for low income people -- that is plans with low up-front costs but tight caps on how much the plan will pay (annual caps, lifetime caps or both). An ACA replacement plan put forward by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) and Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) features such plans for the poor.
2) Trump will offer a plan that proposes something very like Medicaid for people higher up the income chain than the ACA does with something very like Tom Price's plan for people with somewhat higher incomes -- that is, relatively small tax credits, unadjusted for income, to be spent in a deregulated insurance market. I've proposed this myself, and I think it's too good to be Trump.
3) Trump is talking complete nonsense,and has nothing approaching a viable ACA replacement anywhere near development.
Given Trump's lifelong habit of passing off garbage for gold, I'm going with the mini-meds. But who knows?
P.S. Trump says the plan is all but ready to go, but he's waiting for Tom Price to be confirmed before it's unveiled. Maybe among other things it's a ploy to speed Price's confirmation.
P.P.S. Trump also says, "I won't tell you how, but we will get approval." While that was a reference to the awesome power of his tweeting, perhaps Republicans are also planning to abolish the Senate filibuster.
P.P.P.S. See the comments for evidence that Price is interested in a combination of catastrophic coverage and very limited first-dollar coverage via "Direct Primary Care" practices.. Price's ACA replacement bill also touched on this, allowing use of Health Savings Accounts to pay for Direct Primary Care Service Arrangements