There is no Trump health plan. There never was.
There is no GOP health plan. There never was.
And there's not going to be.
I used to think the "if you get sick, die quickly" thing was leftwing hyperbole, but then COVID happened. Now it seems pretty clear that actually is the GOP's guiding principle on health care. That explains eleven years of trying to take away people's health care and replace it with nothing.
True . . . . but not entirely accurate. The simple fact is, ObamaCare actually
was the GOP healthcare plan. It was based on the Dole plan from the mid-90s, and Romney Care when he was governor of MA.
Obama was very public with his advocacy of getting a Single Payer system. That effort was shot down by the legislature.
His fallback position was to advocate for "the public option" - essentially the power for individuals to buy healthcare insurance from the government instead of private insurers. This would have forced more competitive insurance rates, because the government program would, by its very nature, not be for profit. A logical step on the way to a Single Payer system somewhere down the line.
Unfortunately, once again Congress shot down the "government option".
Willing to play the long game, the only thing left was for Obama to settle for RomneyCare - a healthcare system that keeps the private insurers in the for-profit loop between you and your doctor, and charges a tax for the expanded coverage with a mandate for anyone who refuses to get insurance - just like Romney's in MA.
The real reason that the Republican have never come back with anything better, even after 10 years of ObamaCare, is because ObamaCare
was their plan. That was the genius of Obama's push for fundamental healthcare reform. The GOP, intent of stifling him and making him a one-term president, kept moving the goal line farther and farther back. Congress successfully prevented Obama from scoring a touchdown - but he wisely pushed the Republicans all the way back into their own end zone, and settle for scoring a safety.
The GOP, unable to come up with anything better, scored a whopping goose egg on healthcare reform. Now, a decade later, with Biden-Harris in the White House, and in control of both Houses of Congress, ObamaCare has finally won the healthcare game 2 - 0.