President Donald Trump intends to “indict and impugn” Democrats’ health-care proposals, according to a report.
Democrats argued over the ins and outs of Medicare-for-all, a health care coverage system that would eradicate most private health insurance in the United States during both nights of this week’s Democratic primary debate.
On the second night of the debate, Senator Kamala Harris from California said, “There will be a public plan and a private plan under my plan for Medicare.”
On the first night of the debate, Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont made clear that his goal is “single-payer health care,” stating, “It’s not a business” and “our job is to run a nonprofit health-care system.”
Trump has been promising to come up a GOP health-coverage plan to blunt the Democratic momentum on this issue. In March, he tweeted, “The Republican Party will become ‘The Party of Healthcare!’”
In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Trump said, “If we win back the House, we’re going to produce phenomenal health care. And we already have the concept of the plan, but it’ll be less expensive than Obamacare by a lot.” However, Republicans have struggled to devise with much of substance so far.
Meanwhile, the president is moving forward with an executive order to permit some drug re-importation from Canada. He is expected to roll out more such initiatives, which are “unlikely to serve as an ideological or policy counterweight to something as transformatively ambitious and attention-grabbing as Medicare-for-all.”
Next week, Trump is set to make the Dems plan the centerpiece of a speech. One White House official told the Wall Street Journal, “Trump is going to indict and impugn the idea of Medicare for All.”
Trump has constantly mocked Medicare-for-all as a socialist program, declaring last year that, “The new Democrats are radical socialists who want to model America’s economy after Venezuela.”
He wrote, “Medicare-for-all would end Medicare as we know it, take away choice from today’s seniors and serve as a prelude to a government takeover of much of the rest of the economy. That message dovetails with the rhetoric Trump used in his June kickoff rally, when he railed: “A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American Dream.” Democrats announced that they would hold hearings about single-payer health care. Rep. Kevin Brady, said, “We’re going to pull the curtain back on Medicare for all so the American people can actually assess it. Republicans think they are ready to have this fight, and they think they will win it.”
