President Trump wrote an opinion article for USA Today on Oct. 10 regarding proposals to expand Medicare to all Americans — known as Medicare-for-All — in which almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood.

Many of these are claims we have already debunked. Presumably, the president is aware of our fact checks — he even links to two — but chose to ignore the facts in service of a campaign-style op-ed. Medicare-for-All is a complex subject, and serious questions could be raised about the cost and how a transition from today’s health-care system would be financed. Trump correctly notes that studies have estimated that the program — under the version promoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — would add $36 trillion in costs to the federal government over 10 years.

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“Throughout the year, we have seen Democrats across the country uniting around a new legislative proposal that would end Medicare as we know it and take away benefits that seniors have paid for their entire lives.”

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On paper at least, the Sanders plan would improve benefits for seniors, not take them away.

There are several other versions, including proposals more limited in scope (such as “Medicare-X”) that would simply offer a Medicare option as a buy-in. The Kaiser Family Foundation has a useful guide to the differences.
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As a candidate, I promised that we would protect coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions and create new health care insurance options that would lower premiums. I have kept that promise, and we are now seeing health insurance premiums coming down.”

Trump made this promise, but broke it. He supported Republican plans that would have weakened protections for individuals with preexisting conditions. His administration also has refused to defend the Affordable Care Act against a lawsuit that would undermine those protections.
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“Democrats have already harmed seniors by slashing Medicare by more than $800 billion over 10 years to pay for Obamacare.”

Trump resurrects a misleading Republican talking point from the 2012 election.

The Affordable Care Act actually strengthened the near-term outlook of the Part A trust fund. The law includes a 0.9 percent payroll tax that hits the wages and self-employment income of wealthier Americans — above $250,000 per couple or $200,000 for a single taxpayer.
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“The Democratic plan would inevitably lead to the massive rationing of health care. Doctors and hospitals would be put out of business. Seniors would lose access to their favorite doctors. There would be long wait lines for appointments and procedures. Previously covered care would effectively be denied.”

This is a scare scenario. Obviously, a transition to single-payer health care would lead to upheaval and uncertainty since it would encompass the entire health care system, not just the small piece covered by Obamacare. But other countries appear to manage with single-payer systems, at lower costs than the United States.
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As a technical matter, current retirees receive far more in benefits than they have paid into the system, according to the Urban Institute; younger workers are going to have subsidize the baby-boomers moving into retirement.
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The CBO analysis estimated that by 2030, the government would pay just 32 percent of the health care costs, less than half of what the federal plan currently pays. The other 68 percent of the plan would have to be shouldered by the retiree.

Ironically, Democrats successfully attacked the plan as ending “Medicare as we know it.”