Will Trump's random outbursts kill the GOP effort to destroy ObamaCare?
Health care reform is a careful, painstaking process. Does that sound anything like Trump?
As a politician, Donald Trump is intuitive. He doesn't stay up late studying briefing books, or carefully craft messages with multiple layers of meaning. He gets in front of a crowd, throws some stuff out, and sees what gets a response. He jumps on Twitter and says whatever pops into his head. He goes by his gut.
Which is, you can argue, how he got to be president (or at least part of the story). But now that impulsiveness and desire to say whatever will produce applause could be the thing that undoes Republicans' plan to destroy ObamaCare.
Consider what Trump said on the topic at his Wednesday press conference:
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
That's essentially an incoherent string of sentence fragments from someone who obviously has only the vaguest idea about what ObamaCare might be, and — even more critically at the moment — what congressional Republicans are doing or are worried about when it comes to this topic.
Republicans have an impossibly delicate task to perform here, one that presents so many profound political risks that seven years since the law was passed they still can't quite figure out how to accomplish it. They first thought they could do something called "repeal and delay," wherein they'd repeal the ACA with a delay of a couple of years, then use that time to figure out what they want to replace it with. That got so much pushback — including the assurance that it would cause the individual health insurance market to collapse pretty much right away — that they seem to have abandoned it.
So they'd rather have a replacement plan ready to go right along with repeal, but the problem there is that they can't agree on one. As they wrestle with the upheaval they're about to initiate and the tens of millions of people who are going to be screwed over by repeal, they're almost paralyzed with fear. What to do about the millions who will lose coverage, the millions who will lose security, the PR nightmare that will ensue? Will the GOP base tolerate them working it out over the course of months or years, or will they demand immediate action? Are they going to need to eliminate the filibuster to overcome Democratic opposition? What happens when they unveil their plan and people discover that not only won't they alleviate those unpopular deductibles, they're actually going to increase them, by design? Can they survive the political blowback?
These are incredibly difficult questions, and if Republicans manage to answer them, it will only be with a fragile legislative house of cards, one vulnerable to even the slightest breeze of opposition before it comes tumbling down. Now along comes their president, shooting off at the mouth with no understanding of the substance or politics of the issue, threatening to destroy everything with an ill-considered remark or tweet, promising something they can't deliver — like a quick and easy legislative solution that gets wrapped up in a matter of hours — and raising hopes that will inevitably be dashed.
At this point it's almost hard to imagine that Trump won't screw this up for them. Throughout the campaign he promised that he would replace the ACA with "something terrific," not bothering to say what it was. And it was obvious that, as on almost every policy issue, Trump just couldn't be bothered with the details. It'll be great, believe me, you'll love it.
The biggest problem, though, is that health care reform involves tradeoffs. You want to cover everyone and give them comprehensive insurance? Sure, but it's going to cost a lot of money. You want to cut taxes? Okay, but that means you're going to leave a lot of people without coverage and lots of the rest paying out of pocket — bigly, as the president-elect would say. You may recall that during the Democratic primary eight years ago, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had an intense debate about this topic and which of those tradeoffs were acceptable. She insisted that an individual mandate was necessary, while he said it wasn't. But when the plan was written, he came around to her view, and the mandate is the only part of the ACA that's unpopular — but it's the part that makes the whole thing work.
Trump doesn't deal in tradeoffs. When he talks, he tells the crowd what it wants to hear, and the crowd wants to hear that they can have fantastic insurance that will barely cost a thing. All the stuff you like about the ACA? You'll still have that. Anything you don't like? Gone. It'll be no problem.
Not only that, what he says about it today has no relationship to what he'll say about it tomorrow. Whenever he says something new, congressional Republicans have to scramble to reconcile what he says with what they're trying to do. That makes their task even harder. It may just make it impossible.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Paul Waldman is a senior writer with The American Prospect magazine and a blogger for The Washington Post. His writing has appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and web sites, and he is the author or co-author of four books on media and politics.
-
'Sports executives ushered a fox into the henhouse'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
Disney and DeSantis reach detente
Speed Read The Florida governor and Disney settle a yearslong litigation over control of the tourism district
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Today's political cartoons - March 28, 2024
Cartoons Thursday's cartoons - a House divided, gambling in sport, and more
By The Week US Published
-
Trump, billions richer, is selling Bibles
Speed Read The former president is hawking a $60 "God Bless the USA Bible"
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
The debate about Biden's age and mental fitness
In Depth Some critics argue Biden is too old to run again. Does the argument have merit?
By Grayson Quay Published
-
How would a second Trump presidency affect Britain?
Today's Big Question Re-election of Republican frontrunner could threaten UK security, warns former head of secret service
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
'Rwanda plan is less a deterrent and more a bluff'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By The Week UK Published
-
Henry Kissinger dies aged 100: a complicated legacy?
Talking Point Top US diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner remembered as both foreign policy genius and war criminal
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Last updated
-
Trump’s rhetoric: a shift to 'straight-up Nazi talk'
Why everyone's talking about Would-be president's sinister language is backed by an incendiary policy agenda, say commentators
By The Week UK Published
-
More covfefe: is the world ready for a second Donald Trump presidency?
Today's Big Question Republican's re-election would be a 'nightmare' scenario for Europe, Ukraine and the West
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published
-
Xi-Biden meeting: what's in it for both leaders?
Today's Big Question Two superpowers seek to stabilise relations amid global turmoil but core issues of security, trade and Taiwan remain
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published