Trump coming out with health care plan; still unsure of candidacy

By Laurie Kellman, Associated Press, 02/07/00

WASHINGTON -- The unemployed should be given vouchers to buy health care, developer Donald Trump is proposing as part of his undeclared -- and possibly unlikely -- presidential campaign.

"Our current system is a complicated mess which leads to many Americans without access to any affordable quality health care," Trump says in remarks prepared for delivery Tuesday.

The Associated Press obtained a copy on Monday.

But the New York billionaire is having serious doubts about whether the Reform Party can heal its factional infighting to the point where he would be willing to run for its presidential nomination, his aides say.

Trump will meet with advisers at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., this weekend to make his decision, said his strategist, Roger Stone. The reception Trump gets to his health care plan will be taken into consideration, Stone said.

Trump says unemployed people should get vouchers to buy some of the basic coverage that workers get. He'd also expand Medicare to include a new prescription drug benefit and other improvements.

"The present government bureaucracy managing Medicare and Medicaid could be slashed, saving the system billions of dollars," Trump contends in his remarks.

More than 40 million Americans have no health insurance.

President Clinton's ill-fated health care campaign in 1993 also included a proposal to require all employers to offer their workers health care insurance.

Trump's plan appears most similar to those offered by Democratic presidential candidates Bill Bradley and Al Gore, both of whom propose expanding Medicare and making health insurance affordable for more people.

Bradley's plan, the most ambitious and expensive at an estimated $65 billion a year, would do away with Medicaid and offer subsidies to help poor and middle-income people buy health insurance.

Republican candidates primarily favor the expansion of tax-protected medical savings accounts to help people buy their own coverage. Pat Buchanan, the only declared Reform candidate, has had little to say about health insurance.

Stone had no estimate of how much Trump's plan would cost.

Trump's main proposal in the campaign so far has been for a one-time tax of 14.25 percent on the net worth of the wealthy, an idea he said would cost him $725 million personally.

The developer has said he plans to enter the race only if he thinks he can win the general election, and that he would be especially interested if his opponents were Gore and Republican George W. Bush.

Trump has said for some time that he would announce his decision around Feb. 15, and recently appealed to leading Reform Party figures to patch up their differences.

But the infighting has only intensified. The faction aligned with founder Ross Perot plans an emergency meeting in Nashville on Saturday, at which it will try to oust party chairman Jack Gargan. A faction aligned with Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura plans its own emergency meeting, to reinforce Gargan.

Trump has been close to Ventura.