Trump Still Only Has 'Concepts of a Plan' for Health Care
Not even a successful election could get him to go further than that.
Donald Trump promised in September he had “concepts of a plan” to deal with health care. Three months and a successful election later, that’s still all he has.
Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Meet the Press that he had “concepts of a plan that would be better” than Obamacare, though he offered few specifics on what they would look like. Instead, he tried to take credit for the law’s resilience.
“We have the biggest health care companies looking at it,” Trump said in the interview released Sunday. “We have doctors who are always looking. Because Obamacare stinks. It’s lousy. There are better answers.”
“If we come up with a better answer, I would present that answer to Democrats and to everybody else and I’d do something about it. But until we have that or until they can approve it—but we’re not going to go through the big deal. I am the one that saved Obamacare, I will say,” he continued.
Trump also spent much of his time attacking Republican lawmakers for killing his attempt to repeal the law in 2017, namechecking the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for his role in killing his attempts to repeal the law.
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“When John McCain let us down by voting, and Murkowski and Collins, and whoever it was that voted against, but they really let us down,” Trump said. “They did us a great disservice, because we would’ve had great health—Obamacare is lousy health care. It’s very expensive health care for the people. It’s also expensive for the country, but for the people. It’s lousy health care.”
Trump coined the “concepts of a plan” phrase during his only presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, sparking a week’s worth of derision. On Sunday, however, he tried to offer some clarity, committing to coverage for those with pre-existing health conditions and a vague quest for “better health care for less money.”
“There are ways of doing it, I believe,” Trump said.
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