Recommended Reading

Dahlia Lithwick discusses the Trump administration's current strategy on the vital issue of health care. She thinks the plan now is to promise to get the courts to completely repeal Obamacare and then Donald and his crew will come up with something much, much better. This prospect thrills his supporters and they won't even mind that he won't start working on that "something better" until after he wins and starts his second term.

Then the second part of the plan is to lose that repeal effort so they won't have to come up with that plan and Trump can instead blame the courts. Because he knows that he can't deliver what he's promising. In fact, a large part of his party would really, really like it if there were no government health plans at all.

I don't know why anyone falls for Trump's assurances that he can come up with a health plan that will be cheaper and better than the Affordable Care Act. If he could, it would be real simple: They draw it up, they release it, various health care experts endorse it…and even Democrats would get behind it. But it's like he's promising to open a zoo full of unicorns and dragons and yetis and sane Alex Jones followers and other non-existent creatures. He can't deliver so he needs an excuse why not.