President Donald Trump had concerned Americans scratching their heads Sunday night after he tweeted that he now wants to pour more money into health care.
“I suggest that we add more dollars to Healthcare and make it the best anywhere,” he wrote.
That was strange because Trump’s budget plan submitted just days ago called for cutting at least $610 billion from Medicaid and slicing an additional $250 billion from health care by repealing Obamacare. The White House plan also calls for cuts in future spending on health care for children from low-income households. There is no additional spending for any health care in the plan.
The weird disconnect on health care wasn’t a first for the president. When Trump met with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in New York City in early May, the president praised that nation’s health care system. “You have better health care than we do,” Trump said.
He was perhaps unaware that Australia has a government-run, publicly funded universal health care system — and at a fraction of the cost of American health care. It’s a system Trump would be more likely to denigrate as socialist and even worse than Obamacare. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that Trump’s health care proposal would leave an additional 23 million Americans with no health care coverage by 2026.
The White House later said that Trump was just being nice and not pushing for the Australian system in America.
In another puzzling tweet on Sunday, Trump boasted that his tax reform package was moving along “ahead of schedule.”
In fact neither Trump nor Congress has yet proposed a comprehensive tax plan. The White House has released a single page of bullet points in search of a plan that leaves many details unaddressed and questions unanswered.