General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWolff book: Trump privately floated 'Medicare for all'
BY JESSIE HELLMANN - 01/05/18 12:25 PM EST
President Trump reportedly floated the idea of expanding Medicare to cover everyone and intially appeared disinterested in repealing ObamaCare, according to a bombshell book about his first year in office.
Michael Wolff writes in "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" that the president "probably preferred the notion of more people having health insurance than fewer people having it."
"He was even, when push came to shove, rather more for ObamaCare than for repealing ObamaCare," Wolff writes in his book, which was released midnight Thursday and has been attacked and dismissed as "fake news" by the White House.
Wolff wrote that Trump was disinterested in the details of the GOP's repeal-and-replace legislation and went along with the plan so he could move on to other issues. Trump frequently lamented in public that he wished he started with tax reform before ObamaCare repeal and often expressed his impatience with repeal efforts, which took up nearly a year before Republicans threw in the towel after a failed Senate vote.
more
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/367611-book-trump-privately-floated-medicare-for-all-to-aides
roamer65
(36,747 posts)Especially after the Congress becomes Democratic.
Dump is a political weather vane. His only goal is self-preservation.
He just may sign Medicare for all.
AlexSFCA
(6,139 posts)based on prior statements. For a narcissist like trump, he wants to be praised all the time. One of the ways to achieve this is to do something good for everyone. E.g., if he signs medicare for all, history books will remember that. Deplorables will be all for it if trump comes out in support for it. He can repeal aca and replace it with medicare for all - the only viable long term option. Why? because from insurance standpoint - current medicare has the worst possible patients pool - folks over 60. It needs to be open to all. Companies will have an option to pay employees extra tax as they currently do with premiums. It will be good for everyone except private insurance companies like Bluecross, Aetna, etc.
mvd
(65,180 posts)If he floated the idea, it still really had no chance. Publically, he slammed single payer health care. I wouldn't count on a move to the left with him.
dalton99a
(81,570 posts)All things considered, he probably preferred the notion of more people having health insurance than fewer people having it. He was even, when push came to shove, rather more for Obamacare than for repealing Obamacare. As well, he had made a set of rash Obama-like promises, going so far as to say that under a forthcoming Trumpcare plan (he had to be strongly discouraged from using this kind of rebrandingpolitical wise men told him that this was one instance where he might not want to claim ownership with his name), no one would lose their health insurance, and that preexisting conditions would continue to be covered. In fact, he probably favored government-funded health care more than any other Republican. Why cant Medicare simply cover everybody? he had impatiently wondered aloud during one discussion with aides, all of whom were careful not to react to this heresy.
It was Bannon who held the line, insisting, sternly, that Obamacare was a litmus Republican issue, and that, holding a majority in Congress, they could not face Republican voters without having made good on the by now Republican catechism of repeal. Repeal, in Bannons view, was the pledge, and repeal would be the most satisfying, even cathartic, result. It would also be the easiest one to achieve, since virtually every Republican was already publicly committed to voting for repeal. But Bannon, seeing health care as a weak link in Bannonism-Trumpisms appeal to the workingman, was careful to take a back seat in the debate. Later, he hardly even made an effort to rationalize how hed washed his hands of the mess, saying just, I hung back on health care because its not my thing.
It was Ryan who, with repeal and replace, obfuscated the issue and won over Trump. Repeal would satisfy the Republican bottom line, while replace would satisfy the otherwise off-the-cuff pledges that Trump had made on his own. (Pay no attention to the likelihood that what the president construed as repeal and replace might be very different from what Ryan construed as repeal and replace.) Repeal and replace was a useful slogan, too, in that it came to have meaning without having any actual or specific meaning.
The week after the election, Ryan, bringing Tom Pricethe Georgia congressman and orthopedist who had become Ryans resident heath care experttraveled to Trumps Bedminster, New Jersey, estate for a repeal and replace briefing. The two men summed up for Trumpwho kept wandering off topic and trying to turn the conversation to golfseven years of Republican legislative thinking about Obamacare and the Republican alternatives. Here was a perfect example of an essential Trump paradigm: he acceded to anyone who seemed to know more about any issue he didnt care about, or simply one whose details he couldnt bring himself to focus on closely. Great! he would say, punctuating every statement with a similar exclamation and regularly making an effort to jump from his chair. On the spot, Trump eagerly agreed to let Ryan run the health care bill and to make Price the Health and Human Services secretary.
uponit7771
(90,364 posts)dansolo
(5,376 posts)I don't believe that Trump cares about any policy decisions unless it affects him personally. Even now he still ptobably has no idea what Obamacare actually does.