JD Vance Falsely Claims Donald Trump Tried to ‘Save’ Obamacare

Republicans have lied a lot about health care over the years.

JD Vance doubled down on their latest offering on Sunday.

While appearing on NBC’s “Meet the PressVance argued that Donald Trump “protected” Americans who signed up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act during his presidency from losing it.

Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio and now his party’s vice presidential nominee, said Trump “has actually protected far more Americans from losing their health insurance.”

President Trump made similar claims during Tuesday’s presidential debate, claiming he “saved” the 2010 health care law while he was president.

In fact, President Trump has spent his first year in office trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a pledge he made early in his 2016 campaign.

This law is “obamacare” made it possible for millions of Americans to get coverage through Medicaid or supplemental private insurance, and prohibited insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

That’s why the number of uninsured people in the United States has plummeted to an all-time low.

Trump, both as a candidate and as president, has “rejected the Affordable Care Act”something great” – That, “You will get great health care at a much lower cost.” And that “We will have insurance for everyone..”

But Trump never made such a plan.

Instead, as soon as he became president, he pressured Congress to pass a Republican bill that weakened new rules for insurers and drastically reduced funding and eligibility for new insurance products.

As a result, several independent estimates suggest millions of people may have lost their insurance.

One such bill is the American Health Care Act of 2017, and President Trump celebrated its passage through the House with a rally on the White House lawn.

If that proposal had become law, Congressional Budget Office Projections show that the number of uninsured Americans will soar to 19 million by 2020 and 23 million by 2026.

The House bill (and indeed several repeal bills that Trump supported in 2017) would have achieved longstanding conservative goals, such as reducing private-sector regulation and federal spending.

President Trump and his allies have noted that some Americans would have found cheaper insurance if they had purchased coverage on their own, largely because insurers would no longer have to comply with Affordable Care Act rules.

At the time, President Barack Obama promised that people who wanted existing insurance could keep it, but many insurers canceled existing products under the new rules.

But the rules of the Affordable Care Act It makes insurance more comprehensive and more accessible to people with pre-existing conditions.

CBO predicted that without uniform rules, some Americans “with pre-existing or newly acquired medical conditions” would “ultimately be unable to purchase comprehensive nongroup health insurance at prices comparable to what premiums are under current law.”

The possibility that many people would lose their insurance and that rules for pre-existing conditions would be eliminated proved highly unpopular. And a handful of Republicans, including Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against the repeal in the Senate, preventing it from becoming law.

The backlash is broader political criticism The Republican victory gave Democrats control of Congress and the White House again.

Because of that political backlash, Republicans rarely talk about repealing the Affordable Care Act these days. When they do (as Trump still does), they promise they have a better plan.

President Trump’s intentions and track record on the Affordable Care Act are significant because of several signs that the future of the law hinges on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election—specifically, whether President Trump wins and Republicans take control of Congress.

Two prominent conservative manifestos, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and the House Republican Study Committee’s latest budget proposal, call for repealing large swaths of the law.

Last fall, Trump posted on Truth Social that the Affordable Care Act was a “bullshit” and that Republicans should “never give up” on trying to “end” it. In Tuesday’s debate, Trump said he was still interested in replacing the law, and promised he had “a concept of a plan” that would give Americans a better deal.

As usual, Trump didn’t provide any more details on what that means. But on “Meet the Press,” Vance offered a hint, saying, “We want to make sure that everyone is covered, but the best way to do that is to actually promote more choice in our health care system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people in the same insurance pool, the same risk pool.”

It’s the same argument Republicans used to justify their proposal during the 2017 fight to repeal health insurance: loosening the rules for health insurance would allow insurers to market less generous plans or restrict enrollment based on health conditions, making plans more affordable for some people.

As the CBO report notes, the cost is higher prices, less coverage, and, for people with serious medical conditions, no coverage at all.

If the last debate was any indication, the public will not want such compromise.

Of course, many Americans still struggle with health care costs. Even the biggest advocates of the Affordable Care Act admit that it is a complex and flawed program and that there are still major gaps. But polls consistently show that a majority of Americans support the law.

Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has pledged to strengthen the law, including by renewing additional financial aid already being implemented by President Joe Biden and Democrats.

These additional subsidies, which have lowered premiums for millions of people, expire after 2025. Renewing them will be expensive. According to the CBO, extending the support for 10 years would require more than $300 billion in new federal spending.

The money has to come from somewhere. It could be through new taxes, spending cuts elsewhere, or increasing the federal deficit.

Trump has not said whether he supports extending the aid, but given how he and Republicans feel about the Affordable Care Act and government intervention in health care more generally, it’s hard to imagine that either of them would want it to remain.