Trump Finally Reveals His Health Care Plan—and It’s Bad

President Donald Trump unveiled his plan to remake the health care system—and it’s a doozy.

As the government shutdown begins to wind down, with some Democrats backing off their bid to extend subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, the president has started waxing on about his own vision for a new system of American health care. 

“I want instead of going to the insurance companies, I want the money to go into an account for people, where the people buy their own health insurance. It’s so good. The insurance will be better. It’ll cost less. Everybody’s gonna be happy. They’re gonna feel like entrepreneurs,”  Trump said during a Fox News interview Monday night. “They’re actually gonna be able to go out and negotiate their own health insurance. And they can use it only for that reason, that’s the beauty—only for that purpose.

“Call it Trumpcare, call it whatever you want to call it. Anything but Obamacare. Obamacare is a disaster, just like he was as a president,” he added. 

Over the weekend, Trump repeatedly floated this model in a series of posts on Truth Social, where he bid Senate Republicans to draft a bill that would distribute the funds directly to Americans in an effort to increase competition and drive down costs. 

While Trump has claimed his plan would help lower premiums, critics say that Trump’s idea is plainly worse than Obamacare.

The Affordable Care Act created a marketplace where consumers could use government subsidies to help purchase private-sector plans. It’s not clear that Trump’s plan involves any such marketplace, and would plunge consumers into a state of nature.

Democrats have sought to extend subsidies to make insurance plans more affordable, while Republicans claim Democrats are just lining insurers’ pockets while premiums steadily increase. Crucially, as Republicans ensure that enhanced ACA subsidies lapse, insurance premiums are set to skyrocket starting in January, and premiums for individuals will increase by as much as double. 

“This is, unsurprisingly, nonsensical. Is he suggesting eliminating health insurance and giving people a few thousand dollars instead? And then when they get a cancer diagnosis they just go bankrupt?” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy wrote on X Sunday.

Currently, Obamacare enrollees never see the funds from their tax credits, which instead are sent directly to insurers. Trump figures that consumers would rather see the money themselves, what little of it there is. His plan purports to take the burden of negotiating insurance rates away from health care providers and large companies, and place it on individuals. 

While it could be a fun foray for Americans who fancy themselves “entrepreneurs,” there is no reason to think the average Americans would ever want to negotiate, or have the tool kit or information to do so in their best interest. Brian S. King, an insurance claims attorney and chair of the Utah Democrats, wrote on X Monday that Trump’s plan would be like “sending lambs to the slaughter.”

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders chimed in to remind Republicans that there was another way. “Oh, Trump and the Republicans can’t stand how the big, bad insurance companies are ripping off Americans. Really? Are you serious? Then I welcome your support for Medicare for All. Let’s end the greed of the insurance industry & make healthcare a human right, not a privilege,” Sanders wrote on X Sunday. 

Meanwhile, Republicans celebrated Trump’s “simply brilliant” plan. Florida Senator Rick Scott, who committed massive health care fraud as a CEO, claimed Sunday that he was already working on a bill to make Trump’s dream a reality. 

Donald Trump’s latest excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act: commercial real estate vacancy in downtown Chicago.

“The Miracle Mile Shopping Center in Chicago, once considered our Nation’s BEST, now has a more than 28 percent vacancy factor, and is ready to call it quits unless something is done about the murder and crime, which is prevalent throughout the City,” Trump posted on Truth Social after midnight Tuesday, misnaming Chicago’s Magnificent Mile shopping district.

“CALL IN THE TROOPS, FAST, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE! ‘Just the News,’” the real estate mogul added.

The nineteenth-century law would let Trump utilize the military for domestic purposes, allowing troops to police and arrest citizens. If Trump invokes it, he would be able to deploy active-duty forces in order to enact his agenda, which involves federalizing the law enforcement agencies of Democratic-led cities.

Trump has floated the idea of leveraging the Insurrection Act for years, though it has picked up steam since his inauguration earlier this year.

Late last month, Trump told U.S. troops stationed in Japan that he was prepared to send “more than the National Guard” to American cities to safeguard and enforce his presidential agenda—a threat that he said could involve any branch of America’s armed forces.

“And I’d be allowed to do whatever I want, but we haven’t chosen to do that,” Trump said at the time. “And the courts wouldn’t get involved. Nobody would get involved. And I can send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. I can send anybody I wanted.”

The legal loophole has been used by 17 presidents but has not been invoked since 1992, when President George H.W. Bush used it to subdue riots in Los Angeles after the local police force brutalized Rodney King.

In an apparent bid to justify the legal grounds, Trump and his associates have tried to fabricate a fictitious bedlam that they claim has taken over Democratic cities. Instead, they seem to be the ones instigating the chaos.

The state-sanctioned violence has been nearly nonstop in Chicago over the last few months. Last month, agents used tear gas in residential areas “multiple times without audible warnings,” court documents said, surprising families with the painful chemical irritant. A couple of weeks later, federal agents allegedly tear-gassed a group of school-age children on their way to a Halloween parade, in a residential Chicago neighborhood.

Meanwhile, Trump’s most militant supporters are ready and willing to thrust themselves into his violent fray as soon as he gives the signal: Stewart Rhodes said Sunday that he’s “relaunching” and “rebuilding” the Oath Keepers, the armed white supremacist organization that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

President Donald Trump is so deeply out of touch on what life is like for everyday Americans that even Fox News host Laura Ingraham had no choice but to correct him on her show Monday.

Trump, who over the weekend debuted a widely derided 50-year mortgage plan on Truth Social (where he compared himself to FDR), sat with Ingraham to clear things up.

“Your housing director has proposed something that has enraged your MAGA friends, which is this 50-year mortgage idea,” said Ingraham. “So—significant MAGA backlash, calling it a giveaway to the banks, and simply prolonging the time it would take for Americans to own a home outright. Is that really a good idea?”

Trump, in classic form, dismissed her concerns: “It’s not even a big deal. I mean, you go from 40 to 50 years—”

Ingraham corrected him: “Thirty to 50.”

Trump pressed on, saying, “And what it means is you pay something less, from 30—some people had a 40—and now they have a 50. All it means is you pay less per month, you pay it over a longer period of time.”

As Ingraham pointed out, the standard number of years for a mortgage is 30—not 40. And according to many economists, lengthening the time it takes to repay your mortgage by 20 years is, in fact, “a big deal.”

Trump is right that longer mortgages would result in smaller monthly payments. But the overall interest payments would skyrocket.

CNN maps it out like this: If you have a $450,000 home with a 30-year mortgage at a 6.25 percent interest rate, your monthly payment is about $2,771. By the time you’ve paid off your loan, you would have paid more than $547,000 in interest. If you had a 50-year loan at the same rate, your monthly payment would be slightly lower—$2,452—but your total interest would swell to around $1.02 million. That’s 87 percent more than on the 30-year loan.

Plus, it’s likely that the interest rates for a 50-year mortgage would be even higher than for a 30-year one, because a 50-year loan is more risky and it’s harder to anticipate how inflation will affect the economy that far into the future.

But Trump, of course, knows none of this.

Fox News’s Laura Ingraham took a light jab at President Trump’s gaudy, gold-lined Oval Office decorations during a White House tour Monday evening, asking him if he’d got the ornaments from Home Depot.

“Why not silver?” Ingraham asked while Trump gave her a tour.

“You can’t imitate gold, real gold,” the president replied, brushing off her question about the silver. “There’s no paint that imitates real gold.”

“So these aren’t like, from Home Depot?” Ingraham said dryly.

“Nooo, this is not Home Depot stuff.”

“No? Not stuff you buy?”

“This is not Home Depot.”

The Home Depot remark clearly irked the president a bit, especially given just how much time he’s put into making the White House look like Mar-a-Lago, or one of his many other luxury hotels and resorts. Crown molding, golden cherubs, a demolished rose garden, and of course the upcoming $200 million ballroom that he’s treating like some act of service.

All of this is meaningless, especially to the working-class voters Trump promised to fight for on the campaign trail. Sure, SNAP benefits were lost and inflation is up and owning a home is just a dream for many, but at least Trump can stick it to the libs with a gold-plated fireplace that is not from Home Depot. A Democrat, especially a woman, would get absolutely slammed for playing HGTV while the country runs on fumes.

And perhaps even more worrying—these feel like renovations for someone who plans to spend the rest of their days in the White House, not just the next three years.

Can’t afford to buy groceries? President Donald Trump says you’re a chump who’s getting duped.

During an interview Monday evening on Fox News, host Laura Ingraham asked Trump about voter concerns about affordability, which was a key issue in the state elections Democrats swept last week. “Is this a voter perception issue of the economy, or is there more that needs to be done by Republicans on Capitol Hill, or done in terms of policy?” she asked.

“More than anything else it’s a con job by the Democrats,” Trump replied.

Trump proceeded to wind an outrageous conspiracy theory that the Democrats put out memos for liberal news outlets instructing them to fearmonger to Americans about prices—and the media did. His evidence? He claimed that they’d all started to use the word “manufactured.”

“It’s a ‘manufactured’ economy. Nobody uses that word!” Trump ranted.

But the only one attempting to control the media is Trump. Just moments earlier, the president hadn’t even let Ingraham get through a list of products that had seen price increases during his time in office. As she listed beef, coffee, and auto repairs, Trump actually tried to shush her.

“So, are you saying that voters are misperceiving how they feel, or … ? ’Cause you said Biden did that too,” Ingraham asked.

“Well Biden, and let’s say it’s synonymous. Biden and Kamala, because you didn’t know who the hell was campaigning, it got to a point,” Trump said. He proceeded to ramble about how unfair it was that Democrats had sought a new presidential candidate more than a year ago, never actually answering the questions about the issue plaguing voters today.

As inflation and layoffs have surged, grocery prices have soared, and SNAP benefits have been cruelly cut off, Trump has repeatedly insisted he doesn’t want to hear about affordability concerns.