WASHINGTON — Donald Trump took aim at the Affordable Care Act by impersonating a 15-year-old boy in a presidential debate with Kamala Harris on Tuesday. guerrilla warfare on a law swung from liability to a political asset for the democrats.
“Obamacare was bad health care. Always has been. Today is not very good,” Trump said on stage. “And what I’m saying is, if we find something and we’re working on something, we’re going to do it and replace it.”
Trump said he would only repeal the ACA, also known as Obamacare, if he could come up with a better and cheaper system. Pressed by debate moderators on whether he had a plan, he said, “I have a concept of a plan,” adding that he intends to release “concepts and options … in the not-too-distant future.”
The former president did not provide a more specific timetable.
“We could have done better than Obamacare,” Trump said.
Trump’s words marked another turning point in Republicans’ 15-year fight for the ACA. tried to retreat. trump, who revived the issue last fallfocused on downplaying the prospect of a repeal if he returns to the White House this year — until he was asked about it in Tuesday’s debate.
The Harris campaign is exploring ways to weaponize Trump’s comments, including considering paid ads and health-care measures, among other options, according to two sources familiar with the campaign’s thinking. One of them called Trump’s “f— up” to bring up the issue again, which gives Harris a “great opening” to his campaign with key constituencies. On the day of the debate, the Biden administration announced that ACA enrollment had reached an all-time high. 20.8 million Americans signed up this year. In all, about 50 million Americans have gained coverage through the ACA’s private markets since 2014, in addition to those who gained coverage through the law’s Medicaid expansion, the White House said.
David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Harris, vowed on Wednesday that voters will hear more about Trump’s health care comments.
“He promised us a health plan in 2015. A long time ago. He never came. He said he had the concepts of the plan last night. But he still wants to exclude tens of millions of people from health care,” Plouffe said on MSNBC. “People in swing states will hear about it soon.”
The 2010 law, signed by then-President Barack Obama, was unpopular early on and was politically weaponized by Republicans, who vowed to “repeal and replace” it if empowered. But when Trump and the GOP-led Congress tried to repeal the law in 2017, it sparked a public backlash and It boosted the ACA’s popularity. The Trump-backed Republican repeal bill sought to roll back subsidies to expand coverage and eliminate some of the ACA’s most popular features for people with pre-existing conditions. One vote left when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., unexpectedly voted no during the Senate session at night.
Harris, then a senator, recalled that vote on Tuesday.
“You have no plan,” Trump said. “And what the Affordable Care Act does is take away the ability of insurance companies to deny people with pre-existing conditions. I don’t have to tell the audience tonight. Do you remember how that was? The insurance company asked if a child had asthma, if someone survived breast cancer, if a grandmother and remember that grandpa can deny he has diabetes? And thankfully, we’ve strengthened the Affordable Care Act over the last four years since I’ve been vice president.”
Democrats turned the tables on the GOP in the 2018 election, accusing them of excluding millions of Americans from health care and reinstating the option for insurers to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. They wrote the ads themselves. However, Trump insisted on trying to repeal the law for the rest of his presidency and confirmed his claim In 2020, he lost his re-election bid to President Joe Biden to repeal the law.
Republicans in Congress have shown little appetite to revisit the painful fight to repeal the law, now that its benefits are widespread and entrenched in the health care system. This includes some of the most conservative members who support changes to the health care system, but not through the lens of repealing the ACA.
The Affordable Care Act “didn’t work from the point of view that costs have skyrocketed. … Deductions are increasing. Co-payments have gone up a lot,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., who is up for re-election this fall, said in an interview. “You want to have a safety net so people can get health care. … So I wouldn’t talk about what we should do with the ACA. I say: how do we fix the system?
Asked if he supported Trump’s call to reopen the ACA fight, Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 3 Republican of Wyoming, did not directly respond.
“We want to make sure people get the care they want and have insurance that’s affordable and appropriate for them,” she said. “And that’s been a real problem for a lot of Americans under Obamacare, because rates have gone up — more expensive for individuals, and a lot of Obama’s promises have been broken.”