News

Experts Reject JD Vance’s Lies About The Affordable Care Act, Drug Prices, and Reproductive Health Care At the Vice Presidential Debate

Last night, vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance laid out very different visions for American health care on the debate stage in New York City. Over the last few weeks, JD Vance has repeatedly attacked the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and called for gutting protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Yet Vance spent the debate trying to cover up Trump’s deeply unpopular record on health care and reproductive rights, falsely claiming that Donald Trump “chose to build upon” the ACA – despite Trump’s top policy priority being a full repeal of the law. During Trump’s time in office, 2.3 million more people became uninsured. He also falsely claimed that Trump lowered drug costs – when the Biden-Harris administration did just that. 

The truth is the Trump administration worked tirelessly to repeal and undermine the ACA and did nothing to lower health care costs – prescription drug prices actually rose during his presidency. In contrast, the Biden-Harris administration has built on the success of the ACA, protected people with pre-existing conditions, and lowered drug prices. Vance is spewing lies to try and cover up Trump’s disastrous health care record and their Project 2025 agenda. But don’t just take our word for it: 

HEADLINES

HuffPost: JD Vance Completely Rewrote History On Donald Trump And Obamacare. “This is pure fantasy, literally the opposite of the truth. And it matters, because health care for tens of millions of Americans could depend on the election outcome. Voters have a right to know what Trump would do if he gets back to the White House, which means understanding what he actually did when he was there last.” [HuffPost, 10/2/24]

CBS News: False: Vance Claims Prescription Drugs Are Up About 7% Under Biden, But Under Trump, They Went Up Just 1.5% Over Four Years. “The latest figures from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s annual survey estimate that average expenditures per person on prescription drugs — among those who had spent money on prescriptions — had climbed to a mean of $2,820 in 2022, up from $2,549 in 2020. That’s an increase of 11%. But by the same metric, average prescription drug prices per person climbed to $2,303 by 2019, up from $2,107 in 2017, an increase of 9% under Trump. However, measured by a median instead of a mean, expenditures per person for prescription medicines, among people who paid for prescriptions, has largely declined under both the Trump and Biden administrations since 2018.” [CBS News, 10/2/24]

Mother Jones: When Vance Said Abortion Rights Should Be “Left to the States,” He Ignored an Inconvenient Fact. “GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance has a refrain he loves to repeat when he’s questioned about his draconian anti-abortion positions and former President Donald Trump’s plans for reproductive rights: Leave it to the states. […] But there’s a problem. The GOP keeps trying to sabotage abortion rights ballot measures before they even get to voters. They did so in Ohio last year, by instituting a special election in August to try to raise the threshold to amend the state constitution, […] If, as Vance suggests, abortion policy should be determined by a democratic process, it would be legal nationwide, which polling shows is the preference of the majority of Americans. But short of that, as Vance says, reproductive rights will be left to the states. And the GOP in those states shows no interest in letting voters have their say without a fight.” [Mother Jones, 10/2/24]

STAT: Health Care Policy Features Prominently in Vance-Walz VP Debate. “Vance described his previous statement as being about reinsurance and said Trump favored the idea to ‘allow states to experiment a little bit on how to cover both the chronically ill but the non-chronically ill.’” [STAT, 10/2/24]

NPR: NPR Fact Checked The Vance-Walz Vice Presidential Debate. Here’s What We Found. “During his presidency, Trump undermined the Affordable Care Act in many ways — for instance, by slashing funding for advertising and free ‘navigators’ who help people sign up for a health insurance plan on HealthCare.gov. And rather than deciding to ‘save’ the ACA, he tried hard to get Congress to repeal it, and failed. The Biden administration has reversed course from Trump’s management of the Affordable Care Act. Increased subsidies have made premiums more affordable in the marketplaces, and enrollment has surged. The uninsurance rate has dropped to its lowest point ever during the Biden administration. The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 and is entrenched in the health care system. Republicans successfully ran against Obamacare for about a decade, but it has faded as a campaign issue this year.” [NPR, 10/2/24]

ABC News: Vice Presidential Debate Fact Check: Claims Made By Gov. Tim Walz And Sen. JD Vance. “VANCE CLAIM: Vance claimed that Trump made the Affordable Care Act stronger. FACT-CHECK: False. The Trump administration cut millions of dollars in marketing and enrollment aid for the law’s health plans and backed failed congressional and legal efforts to overturn the law. The Trump administration in June 2020 asked the Supreme Court to overturn the law in a case more than a dozen Republican-led states had brought; the high court rejected it. Affordable Care Act enrollment declined by more than 2 million people during Trump’s presidency, and the number of uninsured Americans rose by 2.3 million, including 726,000 children, from 2016 to 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau reported; that includes three years of Trump’s presidency.” [ABC 6, 10/1/24]

InsideHealthPolicy: Vance Says Trump Will Keep ACA Preexisting Conditions Protections, Advocates Cry Foul. “A potential Trump administration would not get rid of preexisting conditions protections, the Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance said during the Tuesday (Oct. 1) VP debate, but Democrats and some stakeholders don’t believe his promise as they review details of the GOP presidential hopeful’s plan to let insurers divide people into plans based on their health care risks. ‘Trump and Vance have made their stance on health care clear: they want to repeal the Affordable Care Act 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,’ Protect Our Care Executive Director Brad Woodhouse said in a statement after the VP debate.” [InsideHealthPolicy, 10/2/24]

Denver7: Denver7 Investigates Fact-Checks Statements Made During Walz-Vance Vice Presidential Debate. “Vance brought up Trump and his role with the Affordable Care Act, claiming the former president helped save a program that was on the verge of collapse. However, during Trump’s time in office, ACA enrollment declined by more than 2 million people, and the number of uninsured grew by roughly 2.3 million. According to PolitiFact, the Trump administration cut millions of dollars in enrollment aid and asked the Supreme Court to overturn the law. Fact Check: False.” [Denver7, 10/2/24]

SOCIAL MEDIA

PolitiFact: “No, Trump did not ‘salvage’ the Affordable Care Act. Vance’s claim is False.” [PolitiFact, X, 10/1/24]

Zinhle Essamuah, NBC News: “VP DEBATE: Walz mentioned maternal mortality rates in Texas post-abortion bans. We reported last month: the rate of maternal deaths in Texas increased 56% from 2019 to 2022 vs. just 11% nationwide during the same time period.” [Zinhle, X, 10/1/24]

Economic Policy Institute: “Fact: Abortion bans derail reproductive freedom and impact the “bread and butter” economic livelihoods of women and their families.” [Economic Policy Institute, X, 10/1/24]

Greg Sargent, The New Republic: “Vance just claimed that Trump salvaged the ACA. Walz rightly pointed out that Trump tried to destroy the ACA. Vance knows Walz is right. In 2017, Vance attacked the Trump-GOP effort to repeal the ACA as a betrayal of Trump voters.” [Greg Sargent, X, 10/1/24] 

Jonathan Cohn, HuffPost: “Literally cannot believe Vance just said Trump tried to repair the ACA with *bipartisan* action. The only bipartisan votes in 2017 were when the likes of McCain, Murkowski joined Democrats to block Republican repeal bills that Trump was trying desperately to pass.” [Jonathan Cohn, X, 10/1/24]

Tim O’Brien, MSNBC: “Vance said, ‘Obamacare was doing disastrously until President Trump came along.’ #VPDebate2024 Under Biden, the number of insured Americans hit a record high, largely thanks to record ACA enrollment.” [Tim O’Brien, X, 10/1/24]

Sahil Kapur, NBC News: “Vance on Obamacare: ‘Donald Trump could’ve destroyed the program. Instead he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.’ This is all false. Trump worked in a partisan way to try and destroy ACA. He simply failed.” [Sahil Kapur, X, 10/1/24]

Dan Diamond, The Washington Post: “Vance: ‘I think that Donald Trump has earned the right to put in place some better health care policies…because he did it successfully the first time’. If Trump had successfully repealed the ACA, as he tried to do, Vance himself warned millions of Americans could lose coverage.” [Dan Diamond, X, 10/1/24]

Larry Levitt, KFF: “Trump did not repeal the ACA, but it was not for lack of trying.” [Larry Levitt, X, 10/1/24]

Chris Hayes, MSNBC: “HE TRIED TO REPEAL THE ACA TWICE I’M GONNA LOSE MY MIND.” [Chris Hayes, X, 10/1/24]

Lower Drug Costs for Seniors, $35-Per-Month Insulin and Protections For Pre-Existing Conditions on the Trump-Vance Chopping Block

Washington D.C. — Tonight, vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance faced off on the debate stage and laid out very different visions for American health care. While Vance spewed lies to cover up Donald Trump’s disastrous health care record, the American people know the truth. Kamala Harris will build on the success of the ACA, protect people with pre-existing conditions, and lower drug prices for every American. 

In the last few weeks, JD Vance has repeatedly attacked the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and called for gutting protection for people with pre-existing conditions. At the same time, Vance is trying to cover up Trump’s deeply unpopular health care record. Vance falsely claimed Donald Trump “chose to build upon” the ACA – despite Trump’s top policy priority being a full repeal and replacement of the law. He also falsely claimed that Trump lowered drug costs – when the Biden-Harris administration did just that. In response, Protect Our Care Executive Director Brad Woodhouse issued the following statement: 

“JD Vance is lying through his teeth. From his first day in office, Donald Trump worked to repeal and sabotage the ACA and every turn. Drug prices soared under Trump, and he did nothing to stop it. Costs went up and millions lost their coverage.

“Trump and Vance have made their stance on health care clear: they want to repeal the Affordable Care Act 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. They want to hike costs on middle-class families while giving more tax breaks to billionaires, CEOs, and corporations. The VP debate has only made it more clear that the future of American health care is on the ballot in November.” 

Background

MEMO: Health Care Is Front and Center Heading Into November

ROUNDUP: JD Vance Announces MAGA Plan to Rip Away Protections For Hundreds of Millions of Americans With Pre-Existing Conditions

Side-By-Side: JD Vance and Governor Tim Walz on Health Care

JD Vance is an existential threat to our health care. In recent weeks, he has been making headlines for his attacks on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its protections for more than 100 million people with pre-existing conditions. Last week, Vance told reporters he wanted to implement a “deregulatory agenda” for health care, declaring, “[T]he best way to do that is to…not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pools.” Translation: he wants to put insurance companies back in charge and give them the power to charge more or deny coverage for people with common conditions like asthma, cancer, and diabetes. 

Trump is fully supportive of Vance’s latest comments attacking people with pre-existing conditions. Earlier this week, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign confirmed that “the president and Vance [are] broadly aligned on health care policy.” At the same time, Trump and Vance are trying to cover their tracks. Recognizing just how unpopular the MAGA health care agenda is across the nation, Vance falsely claimed Donald Trump “chose to build upon” the Affordable Care Act – despite Trump’s top policy priority being a full repeal and replacement of the law. The bottom line is that Trump and Vance will stop at nothing to repeal and sabotage the ACA, hike costs for middle-class families, rip away protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and throw millions of people off their coverage. 

HEADLINES

KFF Health News: Vance Rewrites History About Trump and Obamacare.

• “Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) on Sept. 15 told viewers of NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that former President Donald Trump built up the Affordable Care Act, even though Trump could have chosen to do the opposite. […] The remarks follow statements the former president made during his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia. Trump said of the ACA, ‘I saved it.’” 
• “Both Vance’s and Trump’s statements are false. We contacted Vance’s campaign; it provided no additional information. But here’s a review of policies related to Obamacare that Trump pursued as president. Most of the Trump administration’s ACA-related actions involved cutting the program, including reducing by millions of dollars funding for marketing and enrollment assistance and backing the many failed efforts in Congress and the courts to overturn the law. In June 2020, for example, the administration asked the Supreme Court to overturn the law in a case brought by more than a dozen GOP states. The high court eventually rejected the case.”

Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms: High-Risk Pools: A High Risk Proposition for People with Pre-Existing Conditions.

• “J.D. Vance, candidate for Vice President of the United States, has recently called for a return to the “high-risk pools” that existed prior to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for people with pre-existing conditions. Similarly, when Congress debated repealing the ACA in 2017, several members of Congress advanced the idea of replacing the ACA’s insurance reforms with high-risk insurance pools. Unfortunately, high-risk pools didn’t work before the ACA, they wouldn’t have worked in 2017, and they won’t work now.”
• “But before the ACA, 35 states had high-risk pools. They were basically health insurance ghettos for people with pre-existing conditions – and expensive, poor quality ghettos at that. On the eve of the ACA market reforms, they enrolled 226,615 people, a tiny fraction of those potentially eligible. Here’s why:
  • 1) Coverage was unaffordable. Nearly all of the high-risk pools had to set premiums at higher-than-market rates. Even though the high-risk pools were government-subsidized, those subsidies couldn’t cover the actual costs of this high-need population.
  • 2) Coverage didn’t cover the care needed. To keep costs in check, nearly all the high-risk pools imposed pre-existing condition exclusions, meaning that even if you could afford the premiums, the insurer could refuse to cover any costs for your pre-existing condition for as many as 12 months.
  • 3) Coverage was limited. All but two of the pools imposed lifetime dollar limits on coverage, usually between $1-2 million. Others imposed annual dollar limits on coverage, or limits on specific items or services, such a prescription drugs or rehabilitative services.
  • 4) High out-of-pocket costs. Many of the pools offered plans with high deductibles, requiring people to spend considerable amounts out-of-pocket before coverage kicked in.”

The Washington Post: Vance Floats New Health Plans For Chronically Ill, Reopening ACA Debate.

• “Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) this week said the Trump campaign wants to roll back the Affordable Care Act’s approach to how chronically ill Americans shop for health insurance, with the Republican vice-presidential candidate reopening a health-care debate that Democrats are eager to have — and resurrecting a fight that has repeatedly burned the GOP.
• “Speaking in North Carolina on Wednesday, Vance floated an idea to group chronically ill patients together in health-insurance pools based on their elevated risks. That would reverse a shift driven by the Affordable Care Act, which largely ended the practice of shunting chronically ill patients into what are known as high-risk pools and provided new protections for patients with preexisting conditions.”

​​New York Magazine: Vance: Trump’s Health-Care Plan Is to Let Insurers Charge More for Preexisting Conditions.

• “What Vance came up with is not only surprising but, if understood properly, far more damaging than Trump’s original statement. The Trump plan, according to Vance, is to permit insurance companies to discriminate against people with preexisting conditions.”

The New Republic: J.D. Vance Reveals Atrocious Little Detail of Trump’s Health Care Plan.

• “Vance said that under Donald Trump’s plan, Americans wouldn’t be put ‘into the same risk pools.’… But doing so, as Vance suggests, would come at the expense of much higher charges for everyone else—especially older Americans and those with pre-existing conditions. Right now, the law allows insurance companies to bill older people up to three times as much as they do for the young, Vance is talking about making that gap even higher.”

Bloomberg: Vance’s Pitch Puts Obamacare Repeal Efforts Back in the Spotlight.

• “Democrats are seizing on JD Vance’s pitch to do away with a bedrock part of the Affordable Care Act, saying it would cause costs for chronically ill people to spike.”
• “At a rally on Wednesday, Vance said a second Trump administration would work to separate people into different risk pool…Such a policy would effectively end the ACA’s guarantee that people pay the same prices and get the same benefits regardless of their health status, a popular part of the program.”

Politico: How JD Vance Reopened The Health Care Fight.

• “Vance on Meet the Press last Sunday and in Raleigh on Wednesday, outlined a plan to ‘deregulate’ health care while somehow still making sure everyone had coverage, including the tens of millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions.”
• “‘You also want to implement some deregulatory agenda so that people can choose a health care plan that fits them,’ he said. ‘And we want to make sure everybody is covered.”
• “‘But the best way to do that is to actually promote some more choice in our health care system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pools, that actually makes it harder for people to make the right choices for their families,’ Vance added.”

The Hill: Vance Revives Old GOP Fights On ObamaCare Insurance Coverage.

• “Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) on Sunday floated an idea that would turn back the clock on covering people with preexisting conditions, relitigating a position that was a hallmark of GOP proposals to replace ObamaCare during Donald Trump’s presidency.”
• “In an interview on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ Vance said Trump’s health plan would ‘promote choice’ in the health system by separating sicker people into different health insurance coverage pools from the healthier populations.”

The 19th: Health Plan Floated By JD Vance Could Weaken Protections For Pregnant People.

• “A health care proposal suggested by Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance could gut a popular Affordable Care Act protection, making it legal for companies to charge more for or deny coverage of expensive medical conditions, including pregnancy.”
• “Speaking at a Wednesday event in North Carolina, Vance said that if elected, former President Donald Trump would change health insurance regulations so that people who are healthier and use their insurance less can have cheaper coverage, while those with chronic conditions or who use health care more would have different insurance.”

Vox: Trump’s Health Care Plan Exposes The Truth About His ‘Populism’.

• “On that program, NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Vance to explain what — if anything — Trump planned to change about America’s health care system. […] [T]he one concrete policy Vance did detail would actually involve making health care coverage less affordable for those with chronic illnesses.”

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.”

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.”

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.’”

Allbritton Journalism Institute: The Ghost of Obamacare Repeal Haunts the GOP.

• “JD Vance has endorsed an old policy that would strip protections for people with preexisting conditions — and many Republicans in Congress, having been through this fight before, are sprinting away from the idea.”
• “With Vance’s suggestion that Republicans turn to “high-risk pools” — which, prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, separated very sick people into a more expensive insurance market — he revived a fiercely contested debate that his Senate GOP colleagues seem to still have nightmares about.”

The Washington Post (Opinion): Trump’s ‘Concepts Of A Plan’ Would Destroy The Health-Care System.

• “Vance is referring to letting insurance companies offer different plans and pricing based on whether patients have preexisting conditions or might need more medical care because of their age, health status, gender, etc., or perhaps even their genetic profile. Rather than spreading the insurance risk around to a larger group of people who to some extent cross-subsidize one another, Vance wants to segment riskier patients into their own ‘pools.’ Sicker, higher-risk, more expensive people can ‘choose’ to go into one pool; healthier, less risky, cheaper-to-insure people can ‘choose’ to land in another.”
• “Allowing insurers to discriminate based on age or preexisting conditions has long been politically unpopular. But politics aside, the bigger problem with this design is that it would probably cause insurance markets to implode.”

The New York Times (Opinion): Trump Learned Nothing From the Obamacare Debate. Neither Did Vance.

• “[T]he other day JD Vance, his running mate, gave us a bit more insight into those concepts — concepts that, if implemented, would have the effect of denying health care to millions of Americans, particularly those who need it most. On Sept. 15 on ‘Meet the Press,’ Vance — after noting that people in good health have very different needs from those with chronic conditions — called for deregulation, saying that we should ‘promote some more choice in our health care system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pools.’”
• “To my ear, however, these remarks by Vance — who is closely associated with the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, one of the architects of Project 2025 — sounded similar to this airy statement in the Project 2025 manifesto…”

The Report Highlights Four Main Concepts of The Trump Plan: Rip Away Health Insurance, Raise Costs of Prescription Drugs, Cut Medicare and Medicaid, and Ban Abortion Nationwide.

Over the weekend, the Harris-Walz campaign released a report on Donald Trump and JD Vance’s “concept” of a health care plan and how, if elected, Trump and Vance will rip away health care for millions and raise costs on the rest. The report states, “They have a concept of a plan, and their concept is this: You’re on your own.” 

Recently, Vance admitted that Trump’s plan would turn back the clocks 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. No matter how many times Trump and Vance claim they will make the Affordable Care Act “better,” their agenda speaks for itself. 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 have the power to do whatever they want such as charge people more for insurance or deny coverage altogether.

HEADLINES

HuffPost: Harris Campaign Releases Report On What Donald Trump Could Do To Obamacare. “The point of Monday’s paper from the Harris campaign is to remind people that Trump tried to repeal before ― and could try it again ― threatening health care access for the tens of millions who now depend on the Affordable Care Act… In addition to tallying up the number of people who could lose insurance, the report spotlights the number of people with preexisting conditions who could lose the protection of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance rules.” [Huffpost, 9/30/24]

The Hill: Harris Blasts Trump’s ‘Concepts Of A Plan’ For Health Care In Run-Up To VP Debate. “During the presidential debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump, moderators pushed Trump on his health care plans and he responded that he ‘had concepts of a plan.’ ‘His plan adds up to this: eliminating health insurance and raising costs for tens of millions of Americans, including those with preexisting conditions, seniors, small business owners, working families, pregnant women, and kids,’ the report adds.” [The Hill, 9/30/24]

The Grio: Harris-Walz Campaign Trolls Trump And Vance, Warns Black Voters On Threats To Health Care. “The Harris-Walz campaign is putting Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, on defense when it comes to their record on health care, a top policy issue after the economy for many Black voters… The Harris-Walz campaign’s ‘report’ compiles policy positions and public pronouncements from Trump and Vance, with the aim of laying out to impacted voters what a second Trump administration would mean for millions of Americans currently insured under a federal plan.” [The Grio, 9/30/24]

The Root: The Harris-Walz Campaign Has Given Its Own Version of Trump’s “Concept of a Plan” For Health Care. “…Trump wants to implement ‘some deregulatory agenda’ that separates Americans into different risk pools… ​​The Harris-Walz campaign’s new report sharply criticizes the approach. They say the Trump-Vance plan has four concepts: ‘rip insurance away from millions, including those with pre-existing conditions;’ ‘raise the costs of prescription drugs and health insurance;’ ‘cut Medicare and slash Medicaid;’ and ‘ban abortion nationwide and rip away reproductive health.’” [The Root, 9/30/24]

Cardinal & Pine: Trump’s Health Care Plan Would Be ‘Catastrophic’ For North Carolinians, A New Harris-Walz Report Says. “During his debate with Kamala Harris last month, Donald Trump said that after nine years of running for president, being president, and running again, he finally had ‘concepts of a plan’ to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and improve healthcare access across the country… Repealing the ACA combined with Trump’s other healthcare ‘concepts,’ the Harris-Walz report says, would strip health insurance from more than 1.5 million North Carolinians, drive up prices for most of the people who keep it, and put people with preexisting conditions at risk of either losing their coverage or paying astronomical premiums.” [Cardinal & Pine, 9/30/24]

WHYY PBS: Harris Campaign Issues Report Detailing How Repealing ACA Would Effect Pennsylvanians. “The Harris for President campaign has just released a report titled “The Trump-Vance ‘Concept’ on Health Care’… 420,000 Pennsylvania residents who currently purchase their health insurance from the state’s health care exchange may see their health care costs rise unless an alternative were put in place… The report also claims that ‘more than 5.2 million people with preexisting conditions in Pennsylvania could be denied health care coverage or charged thousands of dollars more under the Trump-Vance plan for high-risk pools.’” [WHYY PBS, 9/30/24]