Bernie Sanders has declared President Donald Trump was right to say Australia has better healthcare than the US.

Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, said the US Senate should use the Australian system as a model while crafting an alternative to the Republican healthcare legislation that Trump endorses.

“President Trump is right. The Australian healthcare system provides healthcare to all of its people at a fraction of the cost than we do,” Sanders commented on Twitter.

President Trump is right. The Australian health care system provides health care to all of its people at a fraction of the cost than we do. pic.twitter.com/CCrZlEyjQh — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 6, 2017

The tweet was accompanied by a short video that set out the virtues of Australia’s universal healthcare system, saying it guarantees better service to all Australians at about half the cost of US healthcare. The video also notes that Australians can expect to live longer than Americans on average.

Sanders’s tweet came two days after Trump told the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, in New York: “You have better healthcare than we do.”

The president’s comment raised eyebrows, coming just after the US House of Representatives had approved a Trump-backed bill that would overturn much of former president Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law and move the US system further away from universal coverage.

The White House later said Trump was simply being nice to an ally and did not think the United States should adopt Australia’s healthcare approach.

The healthcare legislation that Trump endorses would pare back insurance protections for the sick and, according to nonpartisan congressional researchers, would lead to 24 million more Americans being without health coverage by 2026.

But the bill’s approval in the House on Thursday sent the legislation to the Senate, where it has little support.

“We will take this pathetic healthcare bill, throw it in the garbage can and do something that will work for ordinary Americans instead,” Sanders said in a second tweet on Saturday.

A Vermont independent, Sanders has become more influential in the Senate since 2016, when he took his long-shot presidential bid and turned it into a political movement against inequality.

