Trump's Health Care Plan

Still undecided over whether to leap into the presidential contest, developer Donald Trump is proposing that the unemployed be given vouchers to buy health care.

"Our current system is a complicated mess which leads to many Americans without access to any affordable quality health care," Trump says in remarks prepared for delivery Tuesday.

But the New York billionaire has said he is having serious doubts about whether the Reform Party can heal its own wounds, inflicted by factional infighting.

Trump will meet with advisers at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., this weekend to make his decision, said his strategist, Roger Stone. The reception Trump gets to his health care plan will be taken into consideration, Stone said.

Trump says unemployed people should get vouchers to buy some of the basic coverage that most workers get. He'd also expand Medicare to include a new prescription drug benefit.

"The present government bureaucracy managing Medicare and Medicaid could be slashed, saving the system billions of dollars," Trump contends in his remarks.

More than 40 million Americans have no health insurance.

President Clinton's ill-fated health care campaign in 1993 also included a proposal to require all employers to offer their workers health care insurance.

Trump's plan appears most similar to those offered by Democratic presidential candidates Bill Bradley and Vice President Al Gore, both of whom propose expanding Medicare and making health insurance affordable for more people.

Bradley's plan, the most ambitious and expensive at an estimated $65 billion a year, would do away with Medicaid and offer subsidies to help poor and middle-income people buy health insurance.

Republican candidates primarily favor expanding tax-protected medical savings accounts to help people buy their own coverage. Pat Buchanan, the only declared Reform candidate, has had little to say about health insurance.

Stone had no cost estimate for Trump's plan.

Trump's main proposal in the campaign so far has been for a one-time tax of 14.25 percent on the net worth of the wealthy, an idea he said would cost him $725 million personally.

The developer has said he plans to enter the presidential race only if he thinks he can win the general election in November, and that he would be especially interested if his opponents were Gore and Republican George W. Bush.

Trump has said for some time that he would announce his decision around Feb. 15, and recently appealed to leading Reform Party figures to patch up their differences.

But the infighting has only intensified. The faction aligned with founder Ross Perot plans an emergency meeting in Nashville on Saturday, at which it will try to oust party chairman Jack Gargan. A faction aligned with Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura plans its own emergency meeting, to reinforce Gargan.

Trump has been close to Ventura.