Though congressional Republicans just agreed to back off the contentious politics of the Affordable Care Act this year, President Trump began Monday morning by stirring the health-care policy pot anew.
In a tweet shortly after 7 a.m., the president lashed out at Democrats, saying they “are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working.”
The president's broadside essentially reprised an accusation that prompted Senate Republicans to block the confirmation of President Barack Obama's 2010 nominee to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Don Berwick, a researcher on health-care quality and efficiency, served a year and a half as acting CMS administrator before resigning because of a GOP firestorm over an interview he'd given before arriving in Washington. In it, he praised aspects of Britain's National Health Service.
Yet while Trump's theme was familiar, his tweet was inconsistent with his own messages since winning election. In January 2017, five days before he was sworn into office, Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post that he was finishing a health-care plan that had the goal of “insurance for everybody” — a synonym for universal coverage. The White House never produced any such plan as part of the GOP's intense and unsuccessful efforts last year to dismantle much of the ACA.
His accusation of Democrats' favor for universal health care was a twist on the typical conservative attack on liberals' policy leanings. Conservatives usually go after those at the other end of the ideological spectrum for favoring a single-payer health system, as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has advocated. Under a single-payer system, the government would provide all health insurance, replacing the patchwork system of employer-based health benefits, a private insurance industry and various public programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. Some Democrats favor a less far-reaching “public option,” in which more Americans would gain access to government insurance alongside the private health plans.
In contrast, universal health care simply means that everyone has insurance, regardless of whether it is public or private. It is generally not a controversial concept.
Monday morning's tweet did, however, catch the attention of Britain's secretary for health and social care. The secretary, Jeremy Hunt, tweeted out a defense of the British system: “NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage — where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance.”
Read more:
Trump thought the British were protesting their health service. They weren’t.
The nation’s first Medicaid work rules loom, and many fear losing health coverage
Canada's single-payer health system: What is true? What is false?
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