"I highlighted and was troubled about this issue as Donald Trump has not been shy regarding his views on the subject. There have been numerous occasions since 1999 through January of 2017 when he has touted socialized medicine.

In 1999 when Trump was contemplating a run for President under the banner of the Reform Party, he told Larry King:

If you can’t take care of your sick in the country, forget it, it’s over…I believe in universal healthcare.

Also in 1999 on NBC’s Dateline he said:

Liberal on healthcare, we have to take care of people…I love universal.

In 2000 he told The Advocate:

I would put forward a comprehensive health care program and fund it with an increase in corporate taxes.

Also in 2000 Trump published a book The America We Deserve wherein he praised universal healthcare systems:

We must have universal healthcare…I’m a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one. We should not hear so many stories of families ruined by healthcare expenses.

We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single payer plan, as many individual states are doing.

There are many who would dismiss these quotes as being ancient history and claim that Trump has evolved and changed his views. However, he has not. On 60 Minutes in September of 2015 in an interview with Scott Pelley:

Trump: “Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say, No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t afford private. But-“

Pelley: “Universal health care.”

Trump: “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of now.”

Pelley: “The uninsured person is going to be taken care of? How? How?

Trump: “They’re going to be taken care of. I would probably make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what, if this is probably—"

Pelley: “Make a deal? Who’s going to pay for it?

Trump: “The Government is going to pay for it”

Appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman in January of 2015 Trump told a story about a friend who visited Scotland which revealed his true mindset about healthcare:

A friend of mine was in Scotland recently. He got very, very sick. They took him by ambulance and he was there four days. He was really in trouble, and when they released him and he said, ‘Where do I pay?’ And they said. ‘There’s no charge.’ Not only that, he said it was like great doctors, great care. I mean we could have a great system like that in this country.”

Most recently, on January 15, 2017 in an interview with the Washington Post Trump stated:

We’re going to have insurance for everyone.

There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us. People can expect to have great health care.

After the failure to pass the AHCA, Trump says he now wants to work the members of a left-wing political party whose lifelong dream has been nationalized health care. Is this just a fit of pique? Ot is Trump seeking political revenge on those he perceives to have stabbed him in the back because they did not march in lockstep to pass a bill that slightly amended Obamacare? Or does he not care if Obamacare is fully repealed? As that will, in due course, eventuate in the American people clamoring for a single payer system that he has long touted.