White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeatedly claimed during a Friday press briefing that President Trump was just being "complimentary" and nothing else when he told Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that Australia has "better health care than we do."
Later Friday afternoon, Trump clarified via Twitter that, no, he really did mean that he thinks Australia's health care is superior to America's:
Trump made the comment to Turnbull during a sit-down Thursday, shortly after the House narrowly passed the American Health Care Act. "We have failing health care," Trump told Turnbull, referring to ObamaCare. "I shouldn't say this to our great gentleman and my friend from Australia, because you have better health care than we do."
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For the record, Australia offers universal health care as well as private insurance coverage, which Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pointed out sounds a lot more like ObamaCare than the AHCA. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the GOP health-care bill — at least the first version of it — could cause 24 million people to lose coverage in the next 10 years.
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