The Biden campaign on Tuesday seized on former President Trump’s assertion that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the Affordable Care Act, warning a second Trump presidency could harm millions of Americans with preexisting conditions.
President Biden’s reelection team, in a memo first shared with The Hill, cautioned that repealing ObamaCare would strip protections from up to 135 million Americans with preexisting conditions. The 2010 law barred health insurance companies from denying coverage to patients with such conditions.
“Whether you have cancer or diabetes, or are simply a woman, Trump’s plan means insurance companies would again be able to deny coverage for no reason at all — other than the fact that they can,” Seth Schuster, a Biden campaign spokesperson, said in a statement. “But Donald Trump doesn’t care, because like everything in his life, he only cares about himself — and turns out, a billionaire doesn’t have to worry about his health insurance.
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“The American people have rejected MAGA attempts to take away their health care election after election. November 2024 won’t be any different,” Schuster added.
The Biden campaign argued ObamaCare has become “wildly popular” in the nearly 15 years since its passage. A KFF poll published in May found 59 percent of adults held favorable views of the law, compared to 40 percent who viewed it unfavorably.
Trump campaigned on repealing ObamaCare during his first term, but the effort stalled in Congress. The former president, who is the front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2024, raised the topic again on Sunday.
“We had a couple of Republican Senators who campaigned for 6 years against it, and then raised their hands not to terminate it. It was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Republicans were one vote away from repealing the law in 2017, when the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voted with Democrats to keep ObamaCare in place. Ever since, Trump has knocked and mocked McCain, even years after the former prisoner of war’s death from brain cancer.
Three GOP-led attempts to repeal the law through the courts have also failed, including one backed by Trump in 2020.
Trump’s remarks have already been used as fodder by the White House, the Biden campaign and Democrats, who view protecting Americans from losing health insurance as a winning argument that helped propel them into the House majority in 2018.
