WASHINGTON — For Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance to hear it, he wasn’t trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act as president. He “saved.”
in the year presidential debate and in recent television interviews, Trump and Sen. Vance, R-Ohio, have portrayed the former president as selflessly choosing the ACA, or Obamacare, to put the country ahead of politics during his four years in office.
“Obamacare was bad health care. Always has been. Today is not very good. … When I became president, I had a choice: Can I save it and make it as good as possible? It will never be great. Or do I let it rot? And I felt I had an obligation, even though politically it would have been better to let it rot and go,” Trump said. The last ABC debate with Harris. “And I saved him. I did the right thing.”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Vance reiterated that Trump “chose to create” the ACA when he “really protected those 20 million Americans from losing their health care coverage” and “chose to destroy it.” Vance added: “It shows Donald Trump’s whole approach to governance, which is about solving problems.”
Both Trump and Vance are misrepresenting the facts.
As president, Trump has fought to repeal and repeal the ACA using executive action, legislation, and lawsuits.
“Trump failed to repeal the ACA as president, but it wasn’t because he didn’t try,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a nonpartisan research group. “Trump promoted congressional efforts to repeal and replace the ACA and then took administrative steps to try to weaken it when the legislative path failed.”
Trump signed a document on his first day in office executive order declaring: “It is the policy of my Administration to seek the immediate repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”
It directed agencies to use all discretion and authority available to them to waive, defer, exempt, or delay implementation of provisions they deem burdensome.
Trump kept his promise to continue the repeal. It was the first major item on the agenda of the 2017 Republican-led Congress. In May, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would repeal the American Health Care Act, ACA subsidies and regulations. Congressional Budget Office will result in 23 million fewer people with insurance. Trump noted Passage with House Republicans at the victorious Rose Garden ceremony.
“Make no mistake: This is Obamacare repeal and replace” Trump said time.
The effort fell one vote short in the Senate after three Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and John McCain of Arizona — joined Democrats in voting no. Trump has repeatedly criticized McCain since then gave his now iconic thumbs down on the Senate floor.
The legislative initiative was never revived, with one exception: Trump and Republicans managed to reset the ACA’s tax penalty for most Americans who couldn’t afford insurance.
But Trump continued to look for other ways to target the ACA.
He relied on executive power and management cut off Funding for programs to advertise and promote ACA enrollment. Enrollment dropped by some the next year, 2018 blames funding cuts.
“It has cut coverage by 90% and funding for community-based navigators by 84%, making it harder for people to enroll,” Levitt said, referring to those who help Americans enroll in Obamacare plans. “It expanded short-term insurance plans that don’t have to comply with the ACA’s rules, including coverage for pre-existing conditions.”
When Democrats took control of the House that fall, they scuttled legislative efforts to undo President Barack Obama’s signature achievement.
But while other Republicans have tried to abandon what they see as a losing political battle, Trump has not been deterred.
In 2020, he endorsed a lawsuit that would have completely repealed the ACA. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and the Trump administration formally asked the judges to judge for adversaries and annul the law, despite the political risks as he wanted to be re-elected.
Court defended ACA next year. By then, Trump had lost the election and Joe Biden was president.
Now, as he seeks a comeback in 2024, Trump periodically brings up his desire to revisit the ACA battle, replaces the law last fall and declared that “Obamacare is bad.” So far this year, the Trump campaign has softened its rhetoric against the ACA calls for alternatives.
Trump has admitted that he has no plans to replace him.
“I have a plan concept,” Trump said he said In last week’s debate, he added that there were “concepts and options” for a better and cheaper system that he would reveal in the “not too distant future”.
Asked when Trump would implement his plan, campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt did not provide a timeline. “As President Trump has said, he will reveal more details, but his general position on health care remains the same: lower costs and improve quality of care by improving competition in the marketplace,” Leavitt said. Kamala Harris’s support for a socialist government takeover of our health care system will discourage people from private plans and lead to lower quality.
Vice President Kamala Harris is running on a platform to protect the ACA, without giving specific information on how to best respond to the challenge of expanding coverage. He left his post in 2019 All Americans on Medicare. The Democratic candidate is using Trump’s debate remarks in his campaign.
“He has ‘concepts of the plan.’ Concepts of the plan,” he said Thursday at a rally in Greensboro, N.C. “It doesn’t mean any actual plan.”
“And 45 million Americans are covered by the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “So figure out what that means. He’s going to end it on a concept basis and take us back when people are suffering.”