Politifact has given a “false” rating to the claim in a Ted Cruz political action committee ad that “Donald Trump said the government is going to pay for everybody to have healthcare.” But the claim is demonstrably true. The problem is that the author of the attempted fact check didn’t study his source material carefully enough.
I’ll start with the full section of the “60 Minutes” interview that’s clipped in the ad (sections quoted in the ad in bold), then move on to why Politifact’s defense of Trump is wrong.
Here’s “60 Minutes”:
Scott Pelley: What’s your plan for Obamacare?
Donald Trump: Obamacare’s going to be repealed and replaced. Obamacare is a disaster if you look at what’s going on with premiums where they’re up 45, 50, 55 percent.
Scott Pelley: How do you fix it?
Donald Trump: There’s many different ways, by the way. Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say, “No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t afford private.” But —
Scott Pelley: Universal healthcare?
Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.
Scott Pelley: The uninsured person is going to be taken care of how?
Donald Trump: They’re going to be taken care of. I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what, if this is probably —
Scott Pelley: Make a deal? Who pays for it?
Donald Trump: — the government’s gonna pay for it. But we’re going to save so much money on the other side. But for the most it’s going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything.
Politifact’s Jon Greenberg writes that the ad, “left out Trump saying that he was talking about people of limited means, the lower 25 percent, who can’t afford private insurance.”
This is wrong. It’s clear from the context that Trump was actually referring to Republicans as only wanting to cover the bottom 25 percent — a view that he disagreed with in favor of covering everybody. How do we know this? Because of something called a pronoun.
To make it abundantly clear, let’s break down Trump’s statements further.
Trump starts by saying “Everybody’s got to be covered.” He then sets up that pro-universal coverage position as being in contrast with the typical Republican view, saying, “This is an un-Republican thing for me to say.” In other words, universal coverage isn’t very Republican. Then he continues, “because a lot of times they say …” By using the pronoun “they” he’s clearly saying that what comes next is his description of the GOP view, which he explains as “‘No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t afford private.'” If he were articulating his own position, why would he say “they”? Why wouldn’t he just state his own position? There’s a reason why in the official transcript, “60 Minutes” put in quotes the statement “No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t afford private.” Because that was Trump paraphrasing another position he disagrees with.
If one needed any other evidence, it’s telling that after he quotes the Republican position, he says “but.” Again, he’s using “but” to contrast his own position of universal coverage with the GOP position, as he sees it, of only covering the lower-income Americans. At that point, Pelley interjects, “Universal healthcare?” and Trump finishes off his thought, “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not.” So he’s saying he might lose votes in a Republican primary by staking out a position on the need to cover everybody that is in contrast with the GOP position of only covering those with low income.
The fact that he goes on to say he’d do it through private plans isn’t particularly relevant for our discussion — if government paid for everybody to have private insurance, it would represent an expansion of government relative to Obamacare. Whether government-financed private plans for all qualifies as “government-run” is largely a semantic debate.
It’s true that Trump has made a lot of different statements on healthcare over the years and during this campaign. In his 2000 book The America We Deserve, Trump described himself as a “liberal” on healthcare and suggested the U.S. should look to Canada’s socialist system as a “prototype.” During a Republican presidential debate, he said the socialist systems in Canada and Scotland worked well. He has also adopted the liberal position of having government negotiate drug prices.
It’s true that Trump has also talked about health savings accounts and taking down state-level barriers to competition. But the healthcare plan he eventually released that supposedly accomplishes this is a joke. For instance, his plan says it would allow HSAs as if they don’t already exist. He says he would allow insurers to sell anywhere “As long as the plan purchased complies with state requirements,” but that undermines the whole purpose of allowing interstate competition, which is to allow individuals in heavily regulated states the option of purchasing cheaper, less comprehensive insurance, in states with less regulation. For more on the unseriousness of the latest iteration of Trumpcare, read Cato’s Michael Cannon. And do it quickly — before Trump adopts a new position!
