It's far away Now, history has lost its grip on Trump, but Donald Trump has publicly supported single-payer health care. Vice President Kamala Harris has, too. Neither candidate supports the idea now. That accessible history didn’t stop Trump from attacking Harris on Thursday as if she still supported single-payer health care — something the former president claimed would be a bad thing to do.
During a long press conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump said of Harris: “I co-sponsored legislation to eliminate private health insurance, which is very popular, and very unpopular in the United States.” [million] “Americans rely on government-run, socialist health care systems that impose rationing and deadly wait times, while raising taxes massively. They want to take away private health care.”
“It's the best health care in the world,” he continued, adding: “They're all going to be thrown into a communist system… They're going to be thrown into a system where everybody gets health care.”
None of this is true. Harris previously supported eliminating private health insurance in favor of a “Medicare for All” law, or universal health insurance program. But she has since backed away from that idea. While Harris has yet to present her own health care plan, her spokesman recently told NBC News, “The vice president will not push for single-payer as president.”
The United States’ health-care system is exceptional, but not because it provides the best health care in the world. Americans pay far more for health care than people in other high-income countries—such as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Australia—and suffer worse health outcomes. Life expectancy in the United States is lower; infant, maternal, and preventable mortality rates are higher.
While taxes would rise under Medicare for All, studies show that Americans would save money overall. Today, more than 8 percent of Americans are uninsured, and tens of millions of people are underinsured, meaning they have insurance but can’t afford to get the health services they need. On a financial level, forgoing medical care ultimately leads to higher health care costs. And insurance companies routinely deny care to patients because it helps boost their profits.
Trump said Thursday that if the United States had a universal health care system, “you’d have to wait for your doctor, like 10 months, or 12 months, or 11 months, and you’d have to see some of these plans, how they work in other countries, it’s a disgrace.”
Wait times in the United States are already long — not the worst of all rich countries, but poor nonetheless.
Trump concluded his speech on health care by asserting that Harris “can change” her position. “She has changed on everything,” he said.
Trump did the same. Years ago, he was a staunch supporter of a single-payer health care system.
“If you can’t take care of your sick people in the countryside, forget it, it’s over. I mean, that’s not good. So I’m very liberal when it comes to health care,” Trump told Larry King in 1999. “I believe in universal health care. I believe in whatever it takes to get people healthy and better.”
He added that health care should be considered a “right.”
In his 2000 book, The America We DeserveIn his speech, Trump wrote that America should “revisit the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing.” He wrote positively about Canada’s single-payer system: “Administrative costs across America make up 25% of the health care dollar, which is two and a half times more than what it costs to administer health care in Canada. Doctors may get paid less than they do now, as they do in Canada, but they will be able to treat more patients because of their reduced paperwork. The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier lives than Americans.”
Trump did not support a single-payer health care system during his 2016 campaign, but he defended the idea in a Republican debate.
“As far as single-payer is concerned, it works in Canada. It works very well in Scotland. It would have worked in a different era,” he said.
