Trump announces “The Great Healthcare Plan,” but it’s sparse on details

Washington — President Trump on Thursday announced the “The Great Healthcare Plan,” his long-awaited health care proposal, and asked Congress to act. 

The outline released by the White House, however, is sparse on details. especially considering the president said as far back as his first term in office that he would be releasing a health care plan, giving him and his team years to develop a comprehensive proposal. The outline the White House released Thursday mentioned some of the things the administration has already been working on in recent months, like negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to lower individual drug prices. 

The White House says the proposal would “execute the president’s vision to send money directly to the American people, lower health insurance premiums, and cut kickbacks that raise insurance premiums.” 

The president said part of his proposal, which would have to be passed by Congress, would have the federal government send money directly to Americans to buy their own health care. 

“The government is going to pay the money directly to you. It goes to you, and then you take the money and buy your own health care,” the president said in a five-minute video the White House released. “Nobody has ever heard of that before, and that’s the way it is.”

The White House didn’t explain the mechanism for how that would work.

“My plan would reduce your insurance premiums by stopping government payoffs to big insurance companies and sending that money directly to the people,” the president also said. “Obamacare was designed to make insurance companies rich.” 

Mr. Trump said his proposal would also require any hospital to “prominently post all prices of their place of business so that you are never surprised, and you can easily shop for a better deal or better care.”

The president’s proposal comes as the Senate is poised to vote on extending subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. In a rare bipartisan display, the House last week passed a three-year extension of the ACA’s enhanced premium subsidies, which expired at the beginning of the year. 

The expiration of those subsidies meant sharp price increases for millions of Americans, and federal data shows about 14 million fewer people enrolled in ACA plans compared to last year.