{"id":2543350,"date":"2026-01-19T08:36:01","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T13:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/heres-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-trumps-health-plan-2\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T08:38:54","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T13:38:54","slug":"heres-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-trumps-health-plan-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/heres-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-trumps-health-plan-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Here&#8217;s The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Of Trump&#8217;s Health Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fheres-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-trumps-health-plan-2%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2543350&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The White house released a brief 359\u2011word &#8220;Great Health Care Plan&#8221; that mixes some promising ideas with troubling proposals. Positives include shifting public dollars toward patients rather than insurers too boost consumer choice and competition, and expanding over\u2011the\u2011counter drug availability to lower costs and reduce unneeded doctor visits &#8211; though the author insists such flexibility must not permit taxpayer funding of abortion. Moderate or &#8220;meh&#8221; measures would increase transparency (plain\u2011English plan descriptions, denial rates, administrative overhead, and provider prices) and revive funding for cost\u2011sharing reductions to lower premiums; these could help consumers but add regulatory complexity and, in the latter case, contradict the plan&#8217;s stated goal of cutting insurer subsidies. The moast worrisome element is codifying &#8220;Most Favored Nation&#8221; drug pricing to match other countries&#8217; prices, which critics say would import foreign-style rationing, harm peopel with disabilities, and might violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. the plan contains ways to reduce health\u2011care costs but also risks creating <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/tokyo-olympics-set-to-go-on-regardless-of-covid-19-pandemic\/\" title=\"Tokyo Olympics Set To Go On \u2018Regardless\u2019 Of COVID-19 Pandemic\">government red tape<\/a> and policies that could disadvantage the most vulnerable.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>On Thursday, the White House released its self-described &ldquo;<em>Great<\/em> Health Care Plan&rdquo; (emphasis in the original). The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/The-Great-Healthcare-Plan.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">plan<\/a> &mdash; all 359 words of it (yes, I counted) &mdash; contains some good policies and some not-so-good ones.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Most notably, however, it eschews any reference to the <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/03\/02\/how-democrats-covid-bill-gives-welfare-to-the-wealthy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">enhanced Covid subsidies<\/a> that the administration was <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/11\/24\/trumps-reported-obamacare-expansion-is-bad-policy-and-worse-politics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reportedly going to embrace<\/a> just before Thanksgiving. That in itself should relieve conservatives, but it doesn&rsquo;t mean the plan&rsquo;s other components don&rsquo;t deserve scrutiny of their policy merits, or lack thereof.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The Good<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In theory, sending money to patients rather than insurance companies will give the American people greater control over their health care choices, while promoting competition. However, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.juniperresearchgroup.com\/post\/7029\/on-flexibility-and-the-hyde-amendment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">previously noted<\/a>, such a move should <em>not<\/em> include any supposed &ldquo;flexibility&rdquo; regarding taxpayer funding of abortion, a policy that bipartisan majorities have supported for going on half a century.<\/p>\n<p>Likewise, proposals to allow more pharmaceuticals to be sold over-the-counter hold some appeal. Expanding the OTC marketplace could increase competition, while also lowering health care costs by eliminating additional trips to the doctor to obtain prescriptions. By contrast, Obamacare included language (since repealed) requiring people to obtain a prescription to have OTC medicines reimbursed from a Flexible Spending Arrangement or Health Savings Account, which resulted in a rush of unnecessary appointments where patients asked for &ldquo;prescriptions&rdquo; for things like NyQuil (<a href=\"http:\/\/on.wsj.com\/fJ6wJd\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">seriously<\/a>).<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The Bad<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I wouldn&rsquo;t call these policies &ldquo;bad,&rdquo; so much as &ldquo;meh.&rdquo; Proposals to increase transparency &mdash; requiring insurers to explain their plans in plain English, publish their rates of treatment denials, and publicize their percentage of administrative overhead, and mandating providers to publish their prices &mdash; should help at the margins. But as I <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/12\/05\/when-no-one-really-knows-what-health-care-will-cost-prices-skyrocket\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">previously noted<\/a>, it shouldn&rsquo;t take an act of Congress, or myriad federal regulations implementing such an act, to inform people about price and quality information readily available in <em>literally every other type of market<\/em>. Part of me celebrates a reform that can help people become more informed consumers and patients, while the other part of me laments that it will necessitate more government red tape to do so.<\/p>\n<p>The proposal to fund the cost-sharing reduction program falls into a similarly ambivalent category. (This issue gets very wonky very quickly; I have a technical explainer as part of my <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.juniperresearchgroup.com\/2025\/12\/15\/legislative-summary-h-r-6703-lower-health-care-premiums-for-all-americans-act\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">summary of last month&rsquo;s House bill<\/a> that addressed this issue.) On the one hand, this proposal would lower premiums for Exchange plans, particularly for people (like me) who don&rsquo;t qualify for subsidies. On the other hand, this policy would implement Obamacare, and it would also make direct payments to insurers, which directly contradicts the plan&rsquo;s other proposal to &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >stop sending big insurance companies billions<\/a> in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/heres-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-trumps-health-plan\/\" title=\"Here&#039;s The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Of Trump&#039;s Health Plan\">extra taxpayer-funded subsidy payments<\/a>.&rdquo;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The Ugly<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>As I <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/12\/09\/how-trumps-latest-drug-deal-could-save-lives-in-america-and-britain\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">wrote previously<\/a>, the worst of the White House proposals concerns policies to codify the president&rsquo;s Most Favored Nation deals, &ldquo;to get Americans the same low prices for prescription drugs that people in other countries pay.&rdquo; While Americans do pay more than many overseas nations for pharmaceuticals, we should by no means want to import the rationing systems that many countries with socialized medicine use to (artificially) create those supposedly &ldquo;low prices.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, I have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/opinion\/trumps-drug-price-plan-would-hurt-the-disabled-52ebc16f?mod=commentary_more_article_pos41\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">also noted<\/a> that codifying these proposals would harm those most vulnerable among us &mdash; namely, individuals with disabilities, whose lives are deemed &ldquo;not worth it&rdquo; in several countries&rsquo; health care rationing systems. The National Council on Disability has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncd.gov\/assets\/uploads\/reports\/2019\/ncd_quality_adjusted_life_report_508.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">argued<\/a> that these types of price controls violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, making them not just bad policy but potentially illegal.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>American patients deserve lower health care costs, which several policies in the president&rsquo;s health care plan would achieve. They don&rsquo;t deserve arbitrary discrimination against the most vulnerable, which could result from codifying the White House&rsquo;s price control plan.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<div>\n<p>      Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group and author of the book &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1645720020\">The Case Against Single Payer<\/a>.&#8221; He is on Twitter: <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/chrisjacobsHC\">@chrisjacobsHC<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>White House unveils mixed &#8216;Great Health Care Plan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":2543351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Trump-Executive-Order-Photo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[32319,38313,41035,12589,33017],"class_list":["post-2543350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-donald-trump","tag-health-policy","tag-healthcare-reform","tag-obamacare","tag-political-analysis"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Trump-Executive-Order-Photo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2543350"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2543354,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543350\/revisions\/2543354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2543351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2543350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2543350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2543350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}