Saturday, March 25, 2017

What did Donald Trump do today?

He reaffirmed that his backup plan on health care is to damage the ACA until his plan is politically viable by comparison.

The ACA (sometimes referred to as Obamacare) remains the law of the land in the wake of Friday's legislative implosion of Trump's replacement plan. Nevertheless, like any program, it also requires administrative action by the executive branch. By refusing to do day-to-day technical work, or failing to promote the exchanges during registration periods, or not enforcing the tax mandate, Trump could indeed cause the program to "implode" through neglect.

Trump has already ordered the Health and Human Services Department to do everything legally possible to put the brakes on the program. In February, Trump said that Republicans should "let it be a disaster, because we can blame that on the Dems that are in our room, and we can blame that on the Democrats and President Obama.” This would have been a moot point if his replacement plan had passed the Republican-led House, but now has taken on added weight.

Today, in his first tweet on the subject since his plan failed, Trump predicted that "ObamaCare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE."

What's so bad about this?

  • At this point, Trump's argument is that people will like his plan better after they suffer hardships he could have prevented.
  • A president who doesn't want to do some of his job probably shouldn't be doing any of it.
  • Americans' health care is more important than the president's political fortunes.