Tracing the history of Trump and Clinton’s health plans

While much of the 2016 presidential election appears to defy historical trends, the origins of the health policies put forward by the two candidates can easily be traced back to the mid-20^th century, according to a column in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, and the director of Brown University’s public policy program, James Morone, PhD, wrote that the continuity in the positions of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is “as notable as any changes in previous contests.”

Clinton’s plans to allow patients to opt into Medicare at age 55 and revisit the idea of a public option for health insurance falls in line with 68 years of Democratic Party platforms, going back to Harry Truman’s support of a single-payer system in 1948.

“This position has reflected the interests of their political base: lower-income, more heavily minority, and more likely to be uninsured,” Blumenthal and Morone wrote. “Republican candidates have often opposed these coverage extensions. When pressed to set out alternatives, they’ve proposed more modest programs that rely on private-sector solutions. These positions have reflected the interests of Republicans’ political base: more affluent, less likely to be minorities, more likely to be insured, and mistrustful of government.”

Those same dynamics are playing out in 2016, they wrote, with Clinton wanting to expand the Affordable Care Act and Trump wanting it repealed.

For more on how the parties’ positions have evolved from the days of Democrats pushing a single-payer overhaul and Republicans pushing for an employer mandate under Richard Nixon, click on the link below: