“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”
“It’s not going to be their plan,” he said of people covered under the current law. “It’ll be another plan. But they’ll be beautifully covered.”
Despite Trump's apparent promise of universal coverage, the Congressional Budget Office projected on March 13 that the draft legislation introduced in the House of Representatives would result in an increase in 24 million uninsured persons over 10 years, with 14 million of those occurring in the first year.
People covered under the law “can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better.”
Much better? By the time the Republican legislation had been withdrawn, a large list of "essential health benefits" provided by the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare") had been withdrawn. These include mental health and substance abuse services, prescription drugs, preventive care, maternity care, emergency services and lab services, hospitalization, pediatric services, and others. This his how conservatives achieve low-cost insurance. All these were removed at the insistence of the House's "Freedom Caucus", which then went on to insist that the prohibition of excluding coverage based on preexisting conditions be removed as well.
Trump said his plan for replacing most aspects of Obama’s health-care law is all but finished. Although he was coy about its details — “lower numbers, much lower deductibles” — he said he is ready to unveil it alongside Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Although Trump implied he had a plan and that he understood its details, neither turned out to be true. Trump actually outsourced the entire process to Paul Ryan and House Republicans. With respect to "much lower deductibles", the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that deductibles would average $1,550 higher under the Republican plan.
“I think we will get approval. I won’t tell you how, but we will get approval.”
Alas, no. The abysmal legislation was withdrawn on Friday, March 24. And a good thing, too. Near the end of its miserable life, the Republican plan had an approval rating of just 17 percent in a Quinnipac poll, and a disapproval rating of 56 percent.
