California Gov. Gavin Newsom has trolled President Donald Trump over his decade-long promise to usher in a new healthcare plan, which is yet to come to fruition.
In January 2026, Trump announced that he was calling on Congress to enact the “Great Healthcare Plan” to lower drug prices and insurance premiums in a bid to hold insurance companies accountable.
But it appears to have fallen by the wayside amid the president’s war in Iran, his Washington, D.C. beautification projects and other priorities.
The president once again renewed his pledge that the administration would pass the plan during a Monday speech to auto workers in Michigan. So Newsom’s press office account on X pointed out that Trump has been promising to do this for years — and shared a link to a now-defunct webpage as proof.
“Trump’s made this promise FOR 9 YEARS, but you wouldn’t know that since the page with the transcript has seemingly been removed!” the Democrat’s team quipped.
The link to the White House website was for Trump’s 2017 Executive Order titled, “Promoting Healthcare Choice and Competition Across the United States,” which is no longer active.
In February, the president launched TrumpRx, an online pharmaceutical drug market operated by the government allowing Americans to purchase prescription drugs at discounted prices, which the White House touted when approached by The Independent for comment.
“In the time President Trump secured multiple Most-Favored-Nation deals to lower prescription drug prices, Gavin successfully laid exactly zero miles of new high-speed rail track,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in response to Newsom’s remarks.
“We will pass the great healthcare plan. That's what it's called, the Great Healthcare plan, to stop all payments to big insurance companies and give the money directly to you, the people, so that they can buy their own healthcare,” Trump said during his Monday night speech in Michigan. “Which will be much less expensive and be a much better healthcare.”
Even before Trump’s first term, when he was on the presidential campaign trail in 2015 and 2016, it became a running joke that his healthcare plan was being rolled out “within two weeks” after he repeatedly made the promise that never materialized.
Critics said his recent healthcare pledge was reminiscent of that time, responding in droves to a clip of Monday’s speech.
“It's coming in two weeks!” said MeidasTouch editor Ron Filipkowski, while another said, “How many times has he said that? MAGA morons still think he’ll do it.”
“He promised this at the end of his first term, within two weeks,” another social media user noted.
“He promised this in 2016. It's 10 years later,” wrote another.
His long-awaited healthcare plan was unveiled in January by the White House. It would implement and fund a new cost-sharing plan aimed at driving down premiums for plans on the Affordable Care Act exchanges while also providing direct payments to Americans.
Likely to be put into legislation in the form of health savings accounts, the president’s direct payments would be a substitute for the direct federal subsidies for Obamacare plans in the form of premium tax credits passed in 2022. Those tax credits affected the vast majority of plans on the exchanges.
At the time, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that the plan was “the most comprehensive and bold agenda to lower healthcare costs to have ever been considered.”
