After 10 years of promising a healthcare plan that would be better and cheaper than the Affordable Care Act , and with a healthcare crisis unfolding as millions lose access to care through unaffordable insurance premiums or closing of hospitals and clinics, Donald Trump has finally come out with a one-page, 827-word plan. It is intended to repeal and replace Obama’s hard-won Affordable Care Act – 1000 pages with 10,000 more detailing implementation –negotiated and compromised over 18 months at a cost of all Obama’s “political capital.”
Let’s be reminded about what Obamacare did – and what Republicans have tried to repeal (and not replace) more than 80 times, doing now by sabotage what they couldn’t accomplish legislatively: it capped the amount that insurance companies could spend on marketing, administration and profit to 20%; it covered children on parents’ policy through age 26; it ended the higher premiums on “pre-existing conditions” (who doesn’t now, after COVID?) and on women just for the likelihood of having babies. Obamacare brought the obscenely high rate of uninsured to the lowest, 7.4% (half of what it had been), and covered a record 24 million in 2025 (50 million since its inception).
The United States, the richest, most powerful, most advanced country in human history, is also the only high-income nation without universal health coverage. Americans pay the most for health care and have some of the worst outcomes. Senator Bernie Sanders, who has been championing universal health care or some version of Medicare for All, says 68,000 people die each year for lack of access to health care. (https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Fact-Sheet_Medicare-for-All-2023.pdf)
Trump’s single-page plan to control the massive $5 trillion U.S. healthcare industry, representing nearly 18% of the nation’s GDP, the largest U.S. employer with over 17 million workers, that only continues to grow because of the aging population, increased demand, and yes, progress in medicine.
It boils down to this: in Trump’s America, health care is a privilege, not a right.
(See Doctors Running to Serve in Congress Blast Trump’s ‘Great Healthcare Plan’)
This is from the White House: –Karen Rubin, editor@news-photos-features.com
CALLING ON CONGRESS TO LOWER HEALTHCARE COSTS: Today, President Donald J. Trump called on Congress to enact the Great Healthcare Plan, a comprehensive plan to lower drug prices, lower insurance premiums, hold big insurance companies accountable, and maximize price transparency.
LOWERING DRUG PRICES: The Great Healthcare Plan lowers prescription drug prices for all Americans by building on President Trump’s historic actions to reduce costs for American patients.
The Great Healthcare Plan calls for codifying the Trump Administration’s Most-Favored-Nation deals to get Americans the same low prices for prescription drugs that people in other countries pay. This would build off President Trump’s landmark actions that made insulin more affordable in his first term and the successful voluntary negotiations following his recent Executive Order to lower drug prices. Voluntarily negotiated deals with HHS/CMS will be grandfathered in.
The Great Healthcare Plan makes more verified safe pharmaceutical drugs available for over-the-counter purchase. This will lower healthcare costs and increase consumer choice by strengthening price transparency, increasing competition, and reducing the need for costly and time-consuming doctor’s visits.
LOWERING INSURANCE PREMIUMS: The Great Healthcare Plan 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 Great Healthcare Plan stops sending big insurance companies billions in extra taxpayer-funded subsidy payments and instead send that money directly to eligible Americans to allow them to buy the health insurance of their choice.
The Great Healthcare Plan funds a cost-sharing reduction program for healthcare plans which would save taxpayers at least $36 billion and reduce the most common Obamacare plan premiums by over 10% according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The Great Healthcare Plan will end the kickbacks paid by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to the large brokerage middlemen that deceptively raise the cost of health insurance.
HOLDING BIG INSURANCE COMPANIES ACCOUNTABLE: The Great Healthcare Plan ends the days of insurance companies using complexity to make it difficult for Americans to hold them to account by creating the “Plain English” insurance standard and requiring insurance companies to prominently post the profits they take out of premiums as well as information on the frequency with which they deny care.
The Great Healthcare Plan creates the “Plain English” insurance standard by requiring health insurance companies to publish rate and coverage comparisons upfront on their websites in plain English—not industry jargon—so consumers can make better insurance purchasing decisions.
The Great Healthcare Plan will require health insurance companies to publish the percentage of their revenues that are paid out to claims versus overhead costs and profits on their websites.
The Great Healthcare Plan will require health insurance companies to publish the percentage of insurance claims they reject and average wait times for routine care on their websites.
MAXIMIZING PRICE TRANSPARENCY: The Great Healthcare Plan requires any healthcare provider or insurer who accepts Medicare or Medicaid to prominently post their pricing and fees in their place of business and ensure insurance companies are complying with price transparency requirements.
In President Trump’s first term, he issued historic regulations requiring hospitals and insurance companies to post prices in various forms.
The Biden Administration failed to enforce these requirements and took no actions to help patients access actual prices.
The Great Healthcare Plan requires all healthcare providers and insurers to answer to their patients up front on the prices they will be charged—restoring accountability, transparency, and rightly giving power back to patients.
DELIVERING ON PROMISES TO LOWER THE COST OF HEALTHCARE: President Trump promised to lower healthcare costs for ALL Americans and The Great Healthcare Plan will build off of critical actions already taken in his second term to help Americans afford high-quality healthcare.
On May 12, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Delivering Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients” directing the Administration to take numerous actions to bring American drug prices in line with those paid by similar nations. Since that time, the Administration has secured 16 deals with major pharmaceutical manufacturers to bring prices in line with those paid in other developed nations, providing substantial price relief on numerous products taken by millions of Americans.
Shortly after returning to office, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Making America Healthy Again by Empowering Patients with Clear, Accurate, and Actionable Healthcare Pricing Information,” directing the Administration to, after years of neglect by the Biden Administration, promote universal access to clear and accurate healthcare prices. Since that time, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has ramped up enforcement against hospitals out of compliance with price transparency rules, finalized improvements to hospital price transparency rules, and proposed significant improvements to price transparency rules for insurance companies.
In his historic Working Families Tax Cuts law, President Trump expanded access to health savings accounts for up to ten million people on Obamacare, took the most significant actions to reduce healthcare fraud and abuse in history, and made the largest investment in rural healthcare ever.