September 2024

JD Vance Doubles Down on Attacks on Protections for Pre-Existing Conditions

Washington, D.C. — Yesterday, JD Vance doubled down on his attacks on people with pre-existing conditions by calling to dismantle the protections established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). His plan to separate insurance pools would raise costs on over 100 million people with conditions like asthma, cancer, and diabetes. Insurance companies would be back in charge and given the power to lock millions of people out of affordable coverage options. In response, Protect Our Care Executive Director Brad Woodhouse issued the following statement: 

“Let’s make one thing clear: Donald Trump is coming for the Affordable Care Act. Any talk from his team about returning to high-risk pools means dismantling the ACA and its protections for 100 million people with pre-existing conditions. If Trump and Vance get their way, we would return to a time when people with conditions like asthma, cancer, and diabetes could be left uninsurable and unable to access lifesaving care. Once again, insurance companies would be given free rein to do whatever they want, charging people more for insurance or denying coverage altogether. Trump and Vance are completely out of step with the values of the American people and their health care needs.”

HEADLINES

HuffPost: The GOP’s Obamacare Agenda Just Reemerged From Hiding. “Vance was careful to say he and Trump would “make sure everybody is covered,” just as Trump has promised before. But the actual plans Republicans put forward during the 2017 repeal fight would have caused the number of Americans without insurance to rise by millions or even tens of millions, partly because they did not protect people with pre-existing conditions, partly because they simultaneously proposed to slash funding for Medicaid, the program the insures low-income Americans.” [HuffPost, 9/18/24]

The New Republic: J.D. Vance Reveals Atrocious Little Detail of Trump’s Health Care Plan. “It’s much worse than Trump’s answer about his health care plan during last week’s presidential debate, when the former president said that he had “concepts of a plan” and was widely mocked. Vance’s plan existed before the ACA, and left many Americans, particularly with preexisting conditions, stuck with expensive plans that didn’t cover their issues.” [The New Republic, 09/17/24]

Semafor: JD Vance Reopens The Pre-Existing Condition Debates. “Vance’s comments in the same interview appeared to reference policy ideas advanced by Trump during his presidency that would have significantly changed, pared back, or eliminated aspects of the law’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions… He also criticized the law for putting people into “the same risk pools” with a “one-size-fits-all approach” — a seeming reference to prior Republican proposals to offer insurance to people with expensive conditions in separate “high risk pools” rather than require insurers to cover everyone together under similar plans.” [Semafor, 9/18/24]

STAT: Vance’s Confusing Health Insurance Remarks Give Democrats A New Attack Line. “The Ohio senator obliged. In describing Trump’s health care plan, he started off by saying ‘you want to make sure that pre-existing coverage — conditions — are covered.’ Then he said people should be sorted into risk pools, instead of a ‘one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools.’” [STAT, 9/17/24]

Vox: Trump’s Health Care Plan Exposes The Truth About His “Populism.” “… the one concrete policy Vance did detail would actually involve making health care coverage less affordable for those with chronic illnesses… Vance’s vision for health care policy helps clarify the character of the right’s burgeoning “populism.”” [Vox, 9/18/24]

AlterNet: New GOP Strategy: Skyrocket Cost of Health Insurance and Prescription Drugs. “House and Senate Republicans and the Trump campaign are looking to repeal parts of President Joe Biden’s highly-successful Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and President Barack Obama’s highly-successful Affordable Care Act (ACA), with a sharp focus on the provisions that protect access to health insurance and have lowered health care costs and prescription drug costs for millions of Americans – and will do so even more next year.” [AlterNet, 09/18/24]

Neera Tanden, Domestic Policy Advisor to President Biden: “A good thing to focus on today is the fact that Vance said yesterday their plan is to get rid of protections for preexisting conditions and charge older Americans more in insurance premiums. Do you know any of the 100 million people with pre existing conditions? Let ‘em know.” [X, 9/19/24]

Senator Ron Wyden, OR, Chair of the Finance Committee: “JD Vance is saying the quiet part out loud: Trump’s “concepts” of a health care plan amounts to higher costs and worse health care for Americans with pre-existing conditions. Not on my watch.” [X, 9/19/24]

Representative Don Beyer, VA-08: “JD Vance wants Americans to pay more for health care or be denied coverage based on ‘pre-existing conditions’ like being a woman or having asthma. That is what the reality of ‘deregulating insurance markets’ looked like before the passage of the ACA. We can’t go back to that.” [X, 9/17/24]

SOCIAL MEDIA

Joseph Costello, Spokesperson for Harris-Walz Campaign: “If Trump takes power, he promises to put health care for working families on the chopping block, drive up costs, and jeopardize coverage for MILLIONS of Americans.” [X, 9/18/24]

Jonathan Chait, Writer for New York Magazine: “Vance says people with chronic medical conditions would be better off in a risk pool filled with other people with chronic medical conditions (true, if their goal is paying incredible expensive premiums).” [X, 9/18/24]

Charles Gaba, Health Care Data Analyst: “This LITERALLY DEFEATS THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF HEALTH INSURANCE: SHARED RISK.” [X, 9/18/24]

Cameron Joseph, Washington Bureau Senior Reporter for the Christian Science Monitor: “So Vance is basically going back to pre-Obamacare rules on this.” [X, 9/19/24]

Benjy Sarlin, Washington Bureau Chief for Semafor: “Vance went into even more detail on health care in NC today and again talked about separating people with chronic conditions into separate insurance pools — a major change from the ACA’s approach to pre-existing conditions… [Vance said] ‘allow people with similar health situations to be in the same risk pools, so that makes our health care system work better, makes it work better for the people with chronic issues, it also makes it work better for everybody else.’” [X, 9/18/24]

Tristan Snell, MSNBC Commentator. “Trump and Vance would let insurers discriminate with MUCH higher rates for seniors — and anyone with a pre-existing condition. Non-discrimination is one of the main reforms of the ACA — and Trump would KILL it.” [X, 9/17/24]

Todd Zwillich, NPR Host: “GOP healthcare plans, per the last 24 hours:
– repeal pre-existing conditions protections in private insurance
– repeal Medicare’s negotiating power for Rx drugs
-Vaccine conspiracist RFK Jr in charge of personnel at FDA, CDC, and NIH (according to him).” [X, 9/17/24]

More Reporting Reveals Trump’s Agenda to Rip Away Protections for Pre-Existing Conditions

J.D. Vance has said the quiet part out loud about the Trump-MAGA health care agenda. On ‘Meet the Press’, Vance said Trump’s plan would “promote some more choice” by putting people in high-risk pools – meaning he wants to give insurance companies the power to charge people with pre-existing conditions more for coverage.

The Trump-MAGA agenda speaks for itself – no matter how many times Trump and Vance outlandishly claim they want to make the ACA “better.” Under Trump’s plan, we would return to the days when people with conditions like asthma, cancer, and diabetes could be left uninsurable and unable to access lifesaving care. Insurance companies would be put back in charge and given free rein to do whatever they want such as charge people more for insurance or deny coverage altogether. But don’t just take our word for it:

HEADLINES

New York Magazine: Vance: Trump’s Health-Care Plan Is to Let Insurers Charge More for Preexisting Conditions. “Vance is advocating a partial or complete return to the system that existed before Obamacare. In that world, prior to 2014, it was very difficult to find affordable coverage unless you were on Medicare, Medicaid, or got insurance through your employer. There was a market for individual insurance, and it was possible to buy plans if you didn’t get coverage through a government plan or through work. But that market was dominated by “adverse selection” — the only way insurers could make money was to weed out any customers likely to need medical care.” [New York Magazine, 9/17/24

MSNBC Opinion: Vance Signals New Troubles For Those With Preexisting Conditions. “Americans have some experience with this model. It’s the one that existed before the Affordable Care Act became law. States had high-risk pools to cover people with expensive health care needs — people with pre-existing conditions, for example — keeping them out of the patient pools with younger and healthier people. The high-risk pools, however, created dramatic problems for those who needed the most help: Americans with pre-existing conditions were stuck with plans they couldn’t afford and benefits that didn’t meet their needs.” [MSNBC, 9/17/24]

The Hill: Vance Revives Old GOP Fights On ObamaCare Insurance Coverage. “According to insurance experts, the general idea of a high-risk pool is to pull out of the market the sicker people who are a higher cost in order to reduce premiums for the healthy people who are in the regular market. But the pools rarely succeeded in covering people who needed insurance the most. They lacked sufficient funding, so people usually saw high premiums and limited coverage.” [The Hill, 9/16/24]

NBC News: Donald Trump Misrepresents His Push to Repeal the Affordable Care Act “Now, as he seeks a comeback in 2024, Trump has occasionally brought up his desire to revisit the ACA battle, calling for replacing the law last fall and declaring that “Obamacare Sucks.” This year, Trump’s campaign has softened its rhetoric against the ACA while still calling for alternatives. Trump admitted he doesn’t have a replacement plan.” [NBC News, 9/16/24]

Salon: JD Vance’s One Job Is To Clean Up After Donald Trump — But He Keeps Making A Bigger Mess. “On NBC News Sunday, Vance was asked about Trump’s bizarre assertion he had “concepts of a plan” when he was asked during Tuesday’s debate about healthcare. Vance claimed Trump didn’t end the Affordable Care Act because his philosophy is “to fix problems even if he disagreed with the original legislation.” This is false. Trump tried to kill the ACA in 2017 and failed only because a few Republican senators voted to keep it.” [Salon, 9/17/24]

Raw Story: J.D. Vance Returns To Hated ‘Death Spiral’ Health Plan Dropped By GOP Years Ago: Columnist. “Before Obamacare, Americans not receiving health care coverage from a federal program or an employer were dependent on individual insurance providers obligated to weed out the sick — or refuse them coverage — in order to turn a profit, Chait reported.” [Raw Story, 9/17/24]

Off Message: Vance Lets Slip: He and Trump Are Coming For Your Health Care. “Asked Sunday on Meet the Press to elaborate on Trump’s health care ‘concepts,’ his running mate JD Vance explained that the Trump health-care agenda is to wreck protections for pre-existing conditions (while lying about it). […] The text of the quote doesn’t include a revelatory gaffe like “concepts of a plan,” but it’s actually far more damning, because Vance dared to get specific, and the specifics of Republican health policy remain toxic and cruel.” [Off Message, 9/17/24]

Trump’s Real Agenda to Rip Away Protections for Pre-Existing Conditions Is a Political Third Rail 

Washington, D.C. – Over the weekend, Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance said the quiet part out loud about the MAGA health care agenda. As part of his lies about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), he said that Trump’s plan would “promote some more choice” by putting people in high-risk pools. Translation: he wants to give insurance companies the power to charge people with pre-existing conditions more for coverage.

No matter how many times Trump and Vance claim they want to make the ACA “better,” the MAGA agenda speaks for itself. Under their plan, insurance companies would be back in charge and be given the power to charge people more for insurance or deny coverage altogether. We would return to the days where people with conditions like asthma, cancer, and diabetes could be left uninsurable and unable to access lifesaving care. Trump knows that this is a third rail in American politics, so he is doing everything in his power to conceal his record on the ACA, but we know the truth.  

HEADLINES

HuffPost: JD Vance Just Told Another Big Lie About Donald Trump’s Record. “In reality, Trump spent the first year of his presidency trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, following through on a promise he’d made from the very first days of his 2016 presidential campaign. The law, also known as “Obamacare,” allowed many millions of Americans to get insurance by enrolling in Medicaid or subsidized private insurance ― and by prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions. It’s the reason the number of Americans without insurance has plummeted to record lows.” [HuffPost, 09/15/24]

The Hill: Vance Says ‘Of Course’ Trump Has a Plan ‘To Fix American Health Care.’ “Trump sought repeatedly during his time in office to overturn ObamaCare. After failing to come up with a better plan, Trump and congressional Republicans sought to repeal the law in 2017, but it failed by a single vote. The law’s popularity subsequently soared, and Democrats won back control of the House chamber by campaigning on preexisting conditions.” [The Hill, 09/15/24]

SOCIAL MEDIA

Elena Hung, Executive Director of Little Lobbyists. “When @VP says ‘people love the ACA,’ she means people love:
– not being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions
– not being denied coverage because of annual/lifetime limits
– having access to care, including affordable Rx drugs” [X, 9/16/24]

Larry Levitt, Executive Vice President for Health Policy, KFF: “You can’t really say people with pre-existing conditions are protected if they are in a separate insurance risk pool and can be charged exorbitant premiums.” [X, 9/16/24]

Dante Atkins, Atkins Strategies: “JD Vance doesn’t like shared risk pools for health insurance. If you get rid of them, insurance will be a lot cheaper for healthy people and unobtainable for anyone else, which is really a fascist policy if you give it any thought.” [X, 9/16/24]

Brian Beutler, CoHost of Politix.FM. “When Vance here says he wants to put the healthy and sick in different risk pools he’s saying he wants to make pre-existing conditions protections impossible. His claim to want to maintain them is a lie.” [X, 9/16/24]

Ronald Brownstein, Senior CNN Political Analyst: “This is why it’s wrong to say that Republicans have no healthcare plan. The core of every Republican proposal to replace the #ACA has always been to unravel the sharing of risk-raising premiums and diminishing access for older and sicker. That includes many non-college whites.” [X, 9/16/24]

Michael Caley, New Kings Democrats: “He specifically says he wants a deregulation of health care markets which *puts people in different risk pools based on their pre-existing conditions.* At the beginning he lies and says they’ll protect pre-existing but then he lays out a plan that ends these protections.” [X, 9/16/24]

Laura Chapin, Opinion Contributor, US News: “De-regulating the insurance market is how women with positive breast cancer screenings got kicked off their insurance before starting cancer treatment. The choice was whether to go bankrupt or die.” [X, 9/16/24]

John Harwood, Former White House Correspondent, CNN: “Deregulating the insurance markets means that women and older people pay more and that people with pre-existing can’t get affordable coverage at all. Insurance market regulations are the reason the Affordable Care Act has expanded health coverage to millions of Americans.” [X, 9/16/24]

Louise Norris, Journalist: “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t cover folks w/ pre-existing conditions while also’deregulating’ insurance markets & putting people in separate risk pools. Trump did nothing to ‘build’ upon ACA in 2017/18. But he did cut navigator funding & eliminate federal CSR funding.” [X, 9/16/24]

Dan Pfeiffer, CoHost, Pod Save America: “The GOP playbook is to pretend they care about people with preexisting conditions when running for office and then try to take away their access to health insurance when elected.” [X, 9/16/24]

Catherine Rampell, Journalist: “On @MeetThePress, Vance claimed Trump helped more people get health insurance coverage, and specifically Obamacare marketplace coverage. This is false. The uninsured rate *rose* under Trump; it has fallen to its lowest level on record under Biden. … Problem with Trump/Vance healthcare positions isn’t only that they have no plan to achieve their promises (i.e., helping Americans get care). It’s also that their record shows them doing *opposite* of these promises (causing people to lose care).” [X, 9/15/24]

Julie Rovner, Chief Washington Correspondent KFF: Trump’s goal in addressing the ACA back in 2017 wasn’t to fix it… https://npr.org/2017/10/14/557832684/trump-ends-health-care-subsidies-who-will-be-affected” [X, 9/16/24]

James Surowiecki, Journalist: “What Vance says here is v. important – he thinks all Americans should not be in the same insurance risk pool. That would mean that older Americans who aren’t yet 65 and Americans with pre-existing conditions would have to pay much more for health insurance than they now do.” [X, 9/16/24]

The MAGA Agenda Will Gut Health Care and Rip Away Protections for Pre-Existing Conditions

Washington, D.C. – Over the weekend, Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance told yet another lie about Donald Trump’s health care record, claiming that he “chose to build upon” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and made it better “so that Americans didn’t lose a lot of health care” while in office. This follows Trump insisting during the debate that he “saved” the ACA – an audacious and provable lie. 

In reality, Trump was just one vote short of total ACA repeal in 2017, and he did everything in his power to sabotage the law. Under his administration, millions of Americans lost their health insurance coverage, drug prices skyrocketed, and Republicans gave billions in tax breaks to drug and insurance companies and their CEOs. 

The truth is that Donald Trump and his allies do have a plan – repeal and sabotage the ACA and Inflation Reduction Act, take away protections for pre-existing conditions, slash Medicaid and Medicare funding, raise prescription drug and premium costs, and strip away health care from millions of Americans. 

In response, Protect Our Care Executive Director Brad Woodhouse issued the following statement:

“Not only has Donald Trump continued to lie about his record on health care, but now his VP pick is spewing the same lies to the American people. Trump’s first goal as president was to repeal the ACA, and even when he failed, he spent his entire presidency sabotaging it until the bitter end. As a result, millions of Americans lost their health care coverage and access to the critical care they needed to stay healthy. Now Trump is running away from his record with more and more brazen lies because he knows these proposals are deeply unpopular with the American people. Even if he doesn’t succeed at fully repealing the ACA, Trump will stop at nothing to gut it and other critical protections that the American people rely on, sending us back to the days when insurance companies were in charge.”

Washington, D.C. – Last night, Donald Trump made it clear he knows how deeply unpopular his health care agenda is with the American people. He continued to lie about his record and hope Americans believe his outrageous lies like how he “saved” the Affordable Care Act (ACA). what a joke. At the same time, he also promised to “replace” the ACA and said he has “concepts of a plan,” despite promising to unveil his plan for over six years. 

But we know his real plan: repeal and sabotage the ACA and Inflation Reduction Act, slash Medicaid and Medicare funding, take away protections for pre-existing conditions, raise prescription drug and premium costs, and strip away health care from millions of Americans. Trump is a proven liar who will say anything to regain power. No matter what comes out of his mouth, Trump’s record on health care stays the same. 

HEADLINES

NPR: NPR Fact Checked The Harris-Trump Presidential Debate. Here’s What We Found. “During his presidency, Trump undermined the Affordable Care Act in many ways… And rather than deciding to ‘save’ the ACA, he tried hard to get Congress to repeal it, and failed.” [NPR, 9/11/24]

STAT: Trump Admits He Still Doesn’t Have An Affordable Care Act Replacement Plan. “Despite an embarrassing defeat in 2017 for Trump’s effort to repeal and replace the health care law, Trump just can’t seem to let the prospect go — even though many in his party have dropped their attacks on the Affordable Care Act as it’s become more popular… ” [STAT, 9/11/24]

Huffpost: Trump Served Up Revisionist History On Obamacare During Debate. “Donald Trump spent the 2016 presidential campaign promising to repeal the Affordable Care Act… Now he wants you to believe he is responsible for saving the law… ” [Huffpost, 9/11/24]

The New York Times: Debate Fact Checked: Harris And Trump On The Economy, Immigration And Abortion. “Trump did not “save” the health insurance law known as Obamacare; the United States Senate did, in defiance of him.” [NYT, 9/10/24]

The New York Times: Harris Dominates as Trump Gets Defensive: 6 Takeaways From the Debate. “Mr. Trump, 78, sounded his age as he tried to articulate his position on in vitro fertilization: ‘I have been a leader on fertilization,’ he declared. Ms. Harris, 59, had laced into Mr. Trump. She called his position on abortion ‘insulting to the women of America’ and said she had met women across the country whose health and lives had been endangered by abortion restrictions.” [NYT, 9/11/24]

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Vague On His Plans For Obamacare. “Donald Trump didn’t commit to replacing Obamacare and declined to outline a plan for an alternative to the program… Asked if he had a replacement plan, Trump said, ‘I have concepts of a plan. I’m not president right now.’” [The Wall Street Journal, 9/11/24]

Mother Jones: After A Decade, Donald Trump’s Health Care Plan Still In “Concept” Phase. “Trump walked back this claim, saying he would keep the Affordable Care Act, unless he was able to find a good replacement. Trump, in his response, was very vague, concerning an issue as serious as health care—except he knew Democrats were to blame for any problems.” [Mother Jones, 9/11/24]

The Hill: Trump On Obamacare Repeal: ‘I Have Concepts Of A Plan.’ “Trump has railed against the health care law since his first presidential campaign… Most Republicans in Congress have said they’re not interested in trying to repeal the law again…” [The Hill, 9/10/24]

Fast Company: Trump Has Attached Obamacare Relentlessly – And Millions More Americans Were Uninsured During His Presidency. “During his presidency, Trump sought to undermine the Affordable Care Act (ACA)… This election cycle, Trump has shifted away from his 2016 pledges to eliminate the ACA but has yet to offer clear alternative policies.” [Fast Company, 9/11/24]

TV HITS

Charlie Dent, Former US Representative: “Trump has no concept of health care policy. He would always say, ‘we’re gonna cover everybody,’ ‘it’s gonna cost less,’ and ‘it’ll be beautiful.’ There was never any policy to back it up. He just didn’t care about its impact on people, sadly.” [CNN, 9/11/24]

David Plouffe, Senior Advisor to Kamala Harris’ 2024 Presidential Campaign: “We waited 11 years for his health care plan – we’ve never seen it, we never will. His only plan is to kick tens of millions of people of health care. … I think those are three key moments that we’ll see a lot about in the coming days and weeks.” [CNN, 9/11/24]

SOCIAL MEDIA

Rich McLeod: “Trump’s health care plan:” [X, 9/10/24]

Planned Parenthood Action: “That’s not how abortion works, Donald. This is the man who wants to control your health care access and he never fails to lie about abortion and reproductive health care. Almost like he’s seriously unqualified.” [X, 9/10/24]

Jon Favreau, Pod Save America: “‘I have concepts of a plan’ – Trump on health care (and basically everything).” [X, 9/10/24]

Chris Geidner, Law Dork: “‘I have concepts of a plan.’ – Donald Trump, on healthcare, running for president for a third time.” [X, 9/10/24]

Sahil Kapur, NBC Senior National Political Reporter: “Under-appreciated debate moment: Trump reviving his calls to repeal/replace ACA. Republicans have been trying to walk away from this. Trump himself has been downplaying it all year. Now he says he’s ‘working on things’ and ‘we’re going to replace it.’ ‘I have concepts of a plan.’” [X, 9/11/24]

Mike Nellis, Former Senior Adviser to Kamala Harris: “Trump has been running for president for 12 years and he’s never once had a health care plan. He can sit this one out. What a clown.” [X, 9/10/24]

Shannon Watts, Founder Emerita, Moms Demand Action: “‘I have concepts about a plan. I’m not the President. You’ll be hearing about it in the not too distant future,’ Donald Trump on why he doesn’t have a healthcare policy even though he was President for four years and has been running for two. #debate2024” [X, 9/10,24]

Washington, D.C. — On the debate stage tonight, Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump laid out starkly different visions for the future of health care. While Trump doubled down on his lies and dangerous health care agenda, Harris made her priorities clear: “Access to health care should be a right and not just a privilege of those who can afford it.” 

Vice President Harris wants to build on the success of the Inflation Reduction Act and extend its prescription drug savings to everyone, including capping insulin costs at $35 per month and limiting total out-of-pocket drug costs at $2,000 per year. Her plan also includes accelerating Medicare negotiations to lower costs for even more drugs and make the tax credits that are helping people afford their coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) permanent, canceling medical debt for millions of families, and building on her work to combat the nation’s maternal mortality crisis. In contrast, Trump is once again pushing to gut the ACA and its protections for pre-existing conditions, slash tens of billions of dollars from Medicaid and Medicare, and hike prescription drug prices while funneling more tax breaks for big drug companies and wealthy executives.

In response, Protect Our Care Executive Director Brad Woodhouse issued the following statement: 

“Donald Trump put his health care lies on full display on the debate stage. No matter what comes out of his mouth, Trump’s record on health care stays the same. During Trump’s time in office, drug prices skyrocketed, millions of Americans lost their health coverage, and big drug and insurance companies and their CEOs were rewarded with billions in tax breaks. Trump’s first goal as president was to repeal the ACA, and even when he failed, he spent his presidency sabotaging it until the bitter end. The American people demand lower costs and better care – while Donald Trump is fighting for executives on Wall Street, Kamala Harris is fighting for hardworking families.”