An Open Letter to President Trump
President Trump, I want to start by being straight with you. I didn’t vote for you, and was not happy to see you win. But I do acknowledge that you won fair and square, and that you are the legitimate president. And I really do want America to win on your watch, so we’re on the same team now. And that’s why I want to tell you how you can go down in history as the greatest president that anyone has ever seen. A lot of people tell me that you have a very good brain, so I know you will see the wisdom in what I’m about to tell you. You, and you alone, can reform the healthcare system. Big League.
Recently, you observed that “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.” How true that is. Health care is complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. You have said you would replace ObamaCare with “something terrific.” You have promised your plan would “cover everybody.” That plan has a name, Mr. President. It’s called single payer.
This is something President Obama would have loved to have put his name on, but he couldn’t get it done. He couldn’t even get a public option passed, with both houses of Congress on his side. Hillary Clinton would have supported single payer, but she said in the Democratic primaries that she would not have fought for it. Bernie Sanders would have fought for it and lost. There is only one president who could make this happen, and he won the election. It’s President Donald J. Trump. You.
If you decided to come out in favor of single payer, your core supporters would rally around it. They’ve demonstrated many, many times that they don’t care about actual policy positions or traditional Republican values. They only care about winning. They’d do it just to help you embarrass President Obama. All you’d have to do is tweet “Obamacare is a total disaster! We need to repeal it IMMEDIATELY and replace it with single payer,” and you’d add 30% of the population to its support.
Liberals like me care more about policy than personality, that I can tell you. If you went for single payer, it would drive us crazy. We’d have to support you, or we’d be hypocrites forever. We’d have to talk about how President Trump saved the country. When you withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we filled Twitter with grudging praise for you. We couldn’t help it. If you did this, we’d be falling all over ourselves. It would be unbelievable. Liberals would be lining up for repeal and replace.
And when single payer did go into effect, it would be so beautiful. Everyone would be covered. Single payer will bring costs down, too. Politicians don’t understand how to do that. That’s why people voted for a smart businessman to run things for a while. You need to step in and show them. The American healthcare system would be so popular it would make your head spin. They’d call it TrumpCare and talk about how much better it was than loser ObamaCare. The question of who was the better president will have been settled once and for all. Who made single payer happen? It was President Trump.
And the best part is: you already favor this. We know you do. You couldn’t say so during the election. You had a primary to win. Everyone understands that. And pivoting in the general would have shown weakness. But you’re the president now, and you get to make the decisions based on what you believe, not what you might have said or not said while campaigning. As for the people who voted for you based on those positions, they will be the ones that will most benefit from single payer. Believe me. Some people will think it’s unfair that we have a program that helps Donald Trump’s supporters, but you represent the people, not the politicians.
Paul Ryan will be one of the people who will fight you on this. But Paul Ryan never supported you, even after you won the Republican primary. Quite frankly, he was rather disrespectful. I could say something right now, but I won’t. And Ryan is not alone. A lot of career politician Republicans won’t like this. But they are not the president. You are. And between your loyal supporters and the liberals who are already on board, the popular support for this bill will be tremendous. They won’t have any choice but to bend to your will.
That’s the respect you deserve to have, Mr. President. It’s time for you to take it.