The Patriot Post® · Trump's Trumpian Assault on 'Medicare for All'

Like running the football straight up the middle, a regular Democrat play is to accuse Republicans of taking entitlements from America’s seniors. (Remember that infamous ad depicting “Paul Ryan” pushing a wheelchair-bound grandma off a cliff?) Well, President Donald Trump was elected because he was both practically immune from such attacks and isn’t afraid to use those tactics himself.

Thus, with his USA Today op-ed yesterday, he warned that Democrats’ “Medicare for All” plan “will demolish promises to seniors.”

“Dishonestly called ‘Medicare for All,’ the Democratic proposal would establish a government-run, single-payer health care system that eliminates all private and employer-based health care plans and would cost an astonishing $32.6 trillion during its first 10 years,” he wrote. Analysis: True.

He also notes it’s not a fringe idea anymore: “123 Democrats in the House of Representatives — 64 percent of House Democrats — as well as 15 Democrats in the Senate have already formally co-sponsored this legislation. Democratic nominees for governor in Florida, California and Maryland are all campaigning in support of it, as are many Democratic congressional candidates.”

To be sure, Trump plays a bit fast and loose with terminology. Technically, Bernie Sanders’s plan — essentially adopted by Democrats — is to expand Medicare to include better coverage for all seniors and then gradually include all Americans. But what Trump means is that the plan will cost so much, while shifting the cost burden onto taxpayers and the health care industry, that Medicare — and the health market — will effectively be ruined.

Trump has never made any bones about his desire to preserve earned entitlements like Medicare and Social Security as they are, regardless of their drain on federal coffers. In other words, he’s immune from the typical Democrat attack (though The Washington Post does have an absurd and dishonest “fact check” today on his op-ed), and he is instead turning that attack right back on the Left.