I just read the smartest piece I've read on the whole Health Care mess. It's by Ezra Klein and it was written back when Trump was still demanding the Friday vote which wound up not happening. Here's a key excerpt…
Trump is not a guy who makes particularly good deals so much as a guy who makes a lot of deals — many of which lash his name and reputation to garbage products.
Trump, a lifelong teetotaler, didn't scour the globe to find the very best vodka. No — someone offered him an opportunity to make a quick buck by putting his name on a product [Trump Vodka] he wouldn't ever touch and he took it. Trump University was a far darker scam. Trump Steaks were, and are, a joke.
This is Trump's pattern: He licenses his brand and lets others worry about the details of the products. Trump's partners often end up going out of business and his customers often end up disappointed, but Trump makes some money, and he gets his name out there, and it's all good.
This was Trump's approach to the health care bill, too. He let someone else worry about the product and he simply licensed his name, marketing support, and political capital. Trump didn't know what was in the American Health Care Act, and he didn't much care. It broke his promises to ensure health care for everyone, to protect Medicaid from cuts, to lower deductibles, and to guarantee choices of doctors and plans — but he didn't pay attention to any of that. In private, Trump was apparently bored by the subject and eager to move onto tax reform.
And now Paul Ryan is in the position of all those partners in Trump hotels who lost their entire investment when the project failed. But of course.