The Big Surprise in Trump's Health Care Plan

Donald Trump’ healthcare plan reveals more about Donald Trump than his plans for healthcare.

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: Today, Donald Trump added two and a half pages of substance to his campaign releasing a very slim position paper on health care reform entitled, of course, 'Health Care Reform To Make America Great Again."

It begins by calling President Obama the most divisive and partisan president in American History. And that is because Donald Trump and no one in his campaign seems to know that the Civil War actually occurred on President Lincoln's watch. President Lincoln, of course, being, by far, the most divisive president in American History for all the right reasons.

Point one of the Trump's position paper says, "We will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare." Sound familiar? Not to me it doesn't. I have never heard Donald Trump mention Congress having any role in his imaginary presidential powers.

DONALD TRUMP (clip): We're going to win with Obamacare, we're getting rid of it, we're repealing it, replacing it.

O'DONNELL: He always says he's going to do it himself, whether it's repeal Obamacare or raise tariffs on goods from Mexico or China, and he can't do any of that himself. But Donald Trump knows that his voters will never read this paper, and so he can say things like, "Any reform effort must begin with Congress...several reforms will be offered that should be considered by Congress...Congress must act."

The first thing he wants do, of course, is repeal Obamacare, which Senate Democrats will not allow so that will never happen.

Then he wants to allow health insurance to be sold across state lines, meaning your state's insurance commissioner will no longer be able to regulate health insurance. All health insurance will then be sold from whatever state has the weakest insurance commissioner in America who allows the weakest and sleaziest and most deceptive kinds of insurance policies to be sold.

Donald Trump wants to ask Congress to allow individuals to deduct health insurance premium payments, which of course gives the highest deductions to richest taxpayers, and would blow another Trump-size hole in the deficit because of course nothing he proposes in this plan, nowhere in it, does he suggest any way to pay for a single penny of it.

Donald Trump would ask Congress to allow individuals to use health savings accounts that could be used by anyone in their family, and he would ask Congress to block grant Medicaid to the states, which would surrender to the states how they spend Medicaid money. Which would mean governors like Chris Christie would use that money in virtually any way they wanted to to cover up big holes in their budgets.

Nowhere in Trump's plan does he mention pre-existing conditions. The words are never used. Big surprise because he wasn't telling the truth apparently when he said this:

TRUMP (clip): The insurance companies are making an absolute fortune. Yes, they will keep pre-existing conditions. And that would be a great thing. Get rid of Obamacare. We'll come up with new plans. But we should keep pre-existing conditions.

O'DONNELL: Donald Trump says we need to reform our mental health programs, but he has no idea how, and he makes no reference to any specific mental health program. Instead, the Trump plan says, "There are promising reforms being developed in Congress that should receive bipartisan support." You know, because that's the way it works.

This is the most important Trump document yet revealed in this campaign. This is the smoking gun that I guarantee you the media will ignore. This smoking gun proves every public fantasy that Donald Trump has offered voters about his magical presidential powers, every one of those, is a lie and this document proves it.

In this document, President Trump has no power whatsoever. He's just another beggar asking Congress to do something and that actually is the truth of the presidency. That's the design. The truth of the presidency is that Congress has power over every important matter, including selection of Supreme Court justices, including war-making powers. That is how the Founding Fathers balanced the power through the budget that Congress can control anything. It can forbid anything. Congress basically has all that power, and the president just gets veto power over them, and Congress gets the power to overrule the president's veto power.