The Great Healthcare Plan, The White House, President Donald J. Trump, January 2026
Lower Drug Prices
Slash Prescription Drug Prices: Lower prescription drug prices for all Americans by codifying the Trump Administrationās 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 Trumpās 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.
Allow More Over-the-Counter Medicines: Make 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 doctorās visits.
Lower Insurance Premiums
Send the Money Directly to the American People: Stop 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.
Fund Cost-Sharing Reduction Program: Fund 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%.
Cut Kickback Costs: End kickbacks from pharmacy benefit managers to the large brokerage middlemen that deceptively raise the cost of health insurance.
Hold Big Insurance Companies Accountable
Create the āPlain-English Insuranceā Standard: Require health insurance companies to publish rate and coverage comparisons upfront on their websites in plain Englishānot industry jargonāso consumers can make better insurance purchasing decisions.
Publish Costs of Overhead vs. Claim Payments: 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.
Display Claim Denial Rates: Require health insurers to publish the percentage of insurance claims they reject and average wait times for routine care on their websites.
Maximize Price Transparency
Post Prices on the Wall: Require any healthcare provider or insurer who accepts either Medicare or Medicaid to publicly and prominently post their pricing and fees to avoid surprise medical bills.
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D. and Jim Kahn, M.D., M.P.H.
This is it! President Trumpās plan for reforming healthcare in America! In a single page. Specifics deemed irrelevant. But, as the wise saying goes, āthe devil is in the detailsā.
Lower drug prices? By Executive Order? How much? How to enforce?
Lower insurance premiums? This would just shift costs elsewhere, eg deductibles and cost-sharing.
Hold insurance companies accountable? Sure, but itās gloss. To really eliminate waste, eliminate this money-extractive industry
Price transparency? Sick people are terrible price shoppers. Market mechanisms donāt work in health care (Ken Arrow, Nobel Prize 1972). Recent price disclosure rules for hospitals failed miserably.
The problem, of course, is that Trump left out virtually all the reforms that we actually need to make the system perform as it should: universal (cover everyone), comprehensive (all appropriate health care), and affordable (for society and each of us). Letās not be fooled by a 1-page list of unarticulated and untested (or disproven) ideas, and instead follow the successful real-world examples of scores of wealthy nations.
In a way, this nonsense āplanā is good news because Trump has left to us, the people, the task to demand from our legislators to enact a program that will work: a single payer, improved Medicare for All. Funding the system with progressive income and wealth taxes would ensure that those with low and modest incomes do not suffer from financial hardship, and for the billionaires it will be painless since they will not even know what they are paying without checking with their accounting firms.
At the midterms we must elect legislators who understand what real reform is, and should be able to enact it by the time we have in place a compassionate president who cares about the people instead of the billionaires.
(Just out ā a thoughtful critique of Trumpās āplanā by Jonathan CohnĀ here.)
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