In his final rally before Election Day, President Trump attacked Democrats on healthcare by channeling an argument from a surprising source: former rival Hillary Clinton.
Trump, campaigning in Missouri, where Republican challenger Josh Hawley is locked in a tight race with Sen. Claire McCaskill, took aim at the rising popularity of socialized healthcare plans among Democrats, also called single payer or “Medicare for all.”
“If Democrats gain power on Tuesday, one of their very first projects will be a socialist takeover of American healthcare,” Trump said. “You know what’s happening. And your taxes are going to triple, maybe quadruple. You’re not going to be happy. I know you well. The Democrat plan would obliterate Obamacare. It will also – which is good but leave the bad parts behind. It will destroy Medicare.”
The argument that a single-payer healthcare proposal will destroy existing government healthcare programs (including Medicare and Obamacare) was central to the case that Clinton made against independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ plan while they were rivals for the 2016 Democratic nomination.
“It’s a bit concerning to me, because it would basically end all the kinds of health care we know: Medicare, Medicaid, the CHIP program, Children’s health insurance, Tri-care for the National Guard military, Affordable Care Act exchange policies, employer-based policies,” Clinton said of the Sanders plan.
As I noted previously, it’s destructive in the long-term for Republicans to be making an argument against socialized healthcare that is rooted in the idea that we have to protect existing government programs.
