Donald Trump: Health Care, Like Facebook Relationship Statuses, 'Complicated'

Donald Trump explained a really difficult concept today, pointing out that healthcare is actually a pretty complex thing! Speaking to the National Governors Association, Trump shared his surprising discovery:

It’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.

You know, this fellow is pretty quick on the uptake. Maybe a few people, like everyone who's ever looked at the complex hodgepodge of different ways the U.S. goes about providing and paying for healthcare, actually did know it could be so complicated. But now Donald Trump has figured that out, too!

Trump also explained that the smartest political move Republicans could do would be to do nothing about the Affordable Care Act for a couple years and let it collapse of its own weight, since it clearly doesn't work, despite resulting in record low uninsured rates, covering some 20 million people who hadn't had insurance before. But he warned that would be wrong, not simply because people who have insurance might be even more resistant to having it nuked two years from now, but because it would be morally wrong to let the system collapse. If it does. (Of course it will. Everyone hates it so much they signed up in record numbers at the end of 2016.)

As for the terrific replacement Trump wants for Obamacare, it's not quite ready to share with anyone yet, but believe him, it's going to be great, less expensive, with all the parts of the ACA people like and none of the parts they don't, unless of course Congress can never agree on a replacement and the hardcore Tea Partiers get their way and just repeal the ACA altogether, out of principle, because that's what they promised to do.

But that's not what Trump ran on, as if any of his supporters still care about the stuff he promised to do that didn't involve kicking out all the Messicans, which he's already working on. But some of Trump's advisors, including his brain surrogates Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, and Steve Bannon, actually think there could be political costs to completely dismantling health care, according to "multiple individuals who asked for anonymity to describe private discussions." Or maybe they think he could get away with blaming Obama.

Mostly, Trump seems to be dealing with the fallout of having won a job he never really expected to, so he's winging it. As Jonathan Chait says, Trump made it through the campaign by

simply pretending the solution would reveal itself over time and would be extremely easy. Quite likely Trump believed this himself -- as a committed nonreader, and a narcissistic devotee of his own negotiating prowess, he surely believed that he could broker a deal that would satisfy both the moral objective of universal coverage and the specific ideological hang-ups that had prevented his party from ever supporting a plan that would accomplish it in the past.

And now, the schmuck just realized health care is really darned complicated. Maybe someone should do something about it, like yell at the media.

 Healthcare is complicated. Wonkette isn't. You give us money, we make dick jokes about the small-handed president, with no ads. Easy-peasy! 

[ New York / WaPo ]