Donald Trump has talked about unveiling a healthcare plan of his own for about a decade, only to consistently miss self-imposed deadlines for its release. The Republican famously assured the public in 2024 that he had “concepts of a plan,” but when it came to doing the hard work of crafting a policy blueprint, the president has never delivered.
As 2026 got underway, however, Trump unveiled what the White House characterized as “The Great Healthcare Plan” (the italics were in the original), which he’s started to emphasize anew in recent days.
“We will pass the great healthcare plan,” he boasted at an event Monday in Michigan. “That’s what it’s called, ‘The Great Healthcare Plan.’”
At a rally in Georgia last week, the president said much the same thing, almost word for word.
I can appreciate why Trump is trying to breathe new life into his forgotten proposal. The Pew Research Center published the results of its latest national poll last week, and when it came to affordability and the cost of living, Americans said they were concerned more about healthcare costs than about any other issue, including the price of gasoline and groceries.
There is, however, a fundamental problem with the president’s pitch: When he assures the public that “we” will pass his healthcare plan, Trump is brushing past the inconvenient fact he doesn’t actually have a healthcare plan.
Whether Trump fully appreciates this or not, what he unveiled in January was a pitiful joke that was quite a bit shorter than the length of the blog post you’re reading right now — and if your healthcare plan is shorter than a blog post, you don’t actually have a healthcare plan.
As for the idea that officials “will pass” the plan, it’s important to emphasize there is nothing to pass. There was no bill when the vague hodgepodge of conservative ideas was unveiled, and seven months later, there is still no legislative next, no congressional hearings scheduled and no debate over the nonexistent blueprint’s merits. The proposal, for all intents and purposes, simply does not exist, even if the president is inclined to pretend otherwise.
A Washington Post report noted in January, “The administration released no legislative text nor timeline for related congressional action. … Asked how the proposal would advance in Congress, administration officials said it was a ‘broad architecture’ intended to guide lawmakers on next steps.”
“Broad architecture” is a nice euphemism for “we couldn’t actually come up with anything more than vague goals.”
As Trump’s latest comments indicated, at the heart of the proposal is a demand for one significant change: The administration wants federal funds that are currently going to insurance companies to go instead to consumers, who in turn would give the money to insurance companies.
Why would that be better than the status quo? I honestly have no idea, and neither the president nor anyone on his team has made any effort to address that question, which has lingered for months.
As for the political context, Republicans should probably take a moment to grapple with the fact that Trump is picking the wrong fight at the wrong time. Recent polling from the Pew Research Center and Fox News showed Democrats with an enormous advantage over the GOP on handling healthcare. Indeed, by some measure, it’s literally the Democrats’ strongest issue.
So with roughly three months remaining before the midterm elections, the president is practically doing Democrats a favor by trying to shift the focus back to an issue that’s become something of an embarrassment for him and his party.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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