Ted Cruz is on the attack. In an ad running in Iowa ahead of today’s caucus–the first battle of this year’s presidential primary–Cruz uses Trump’s own words to compare the Donald to Hillary and Obama. HillaryCare, ObamaCare, TrumpCare, it’s all the same thing, Cruz implies: a government takeover of healthcare that the U.S. citizenry should not want and cannot afford.
“A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for ObamaCare,” Cruz said on Meet The Press. “Donald Trump andHillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have the identical position on health care. Which is they want to put the government in charge of you and your doctor. Now my views are polar opposites.”
As Dan Diamond notes at Politico Pulse, Cruz is sort of right. Trump has consistently backed the idea of universal healthcare coverage, even as he proclaims, “I am so against ObamaCare.” And that’s once again proof of Trump’s peculiar political genius: you can have universal healthcare and hate ObamaCare, too. Instead of seeing a contradiction, his backers simply cheer.
If Trump wins in Iowa (poll tracker FiveThirtyEight puts his odds at 46%, eight points higher than Cruz’s), he’ll be successfully taking advantage of something some liberals have been complaining about for years. It’s not so much the “care” in ObamaCare and HillaryCare that many of their opponents hate. It’s Obama and Hillary.
There are very real problems with ObamaCare. The law did result in some rate increases and canceled plans, and voters blame it for increases and cancellations it didn’t cause, too. Worse, big insurers like Aetna AET +1.94% and UnitedHealthcare are now complaining that being in the ObamaCare system is not profitable. They are threatening to get out.
So Trump’s getting away with making the vague promise that he’d offer universal care, and the government will pay, without increasing costs. (Likely impossible–healthcare costs money.) And his ideas have gotten even more, well, radical. He’s adopted a solution Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have proposed for controlling drug prices: giving Medicare the ability to use its huge size to negotiate with drug companies.
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