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Trump Announces Phony New Health Care 'Plan'

President Donald Trump really, really wants to fool voters into thinking he has a plan to make the health care system great again. But he really, really doesn’t.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, on Thursday, Trump signed executive orders he claims address two of the biggest concerns Americans have about the health care system: coverage for people with preexisting conditions and surprise medical bills.

The orders don’t do anything about anything, though. It’s just more vaporware from the Trump administration. Slogans, lies and exaggerations aren’t policies. Trump pitched his phantom plan by saying it rests on three pillars: “more choice,” “lower costs,” and “better care,” and that it would “put patients first.”

Those focus-group-tested slogans sound great! Except they’re hogwash.

The truth is that, like in so many other areas, Trump doesn’t want to do the work. After all, as Trump once said, health care is “complicated!” Who needs the headache when there are people of color to insult and golf to play?

Executive orders like these are little more than campaign press releases printed on fancier stationery. Since Trump doesn’t have the interest or patience to actually work with Congress to make laws, he tosses off toothless executive orders and farms out his Obamacare repeal efforts to a court system he’s packed with his own judges.

There’s no evidence that Trump cares about health care at all beyond his intense desire to undo anything President Barack Obama did in office. Has there been anything about Trump’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic to suggest that the health and well-being of Americans is a priority for him? Two hundred thousand dead say otherwise.

Trump barely engaged in the 2017 legislative fight to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a GOP plan that would have kicked tens of millions of Americans off their health care. After that failed, he gave up even trying to legislate on...

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