Ledger · Before politics · № 3

"We must have universal health care" — the 2000 book pledge he inverted

Broken
“We must have universal healthcare. ... I'm a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one. ... We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan.”
Promised
, Trump's book "The America We Deserve"
Re-promised
2 times with a fresh deadline
Topic
Health care
Era
Before politics

What happened

Trump praised Canada's single-payer system in print in 2000 and told CNN in 1999 he believed health care was "an entitlement" from birth. By 2011 he had abandoned the position, and as president he spent 2017 trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement, called single-payer a "curse" in September 2017, and in 2024 said he had only "concepts of a plan." Universal coverage never came.

Sources

  1. Donald Trump In 1999: "I Believe In Universal Health Care...It's An Entitlement" From Birth BuzzFeed News, Jul 1, 2015
  2. The America We Deserve Wikipedia, Jan 1, 2024
  3. Conservative columnist: Trump once backed single-payer health care PolitiFact, Jul 24, 2015
  4. Trump calls single-payer a curse but it makes health care better CNBC, Sep 15, 2017