Donald Trump is an existential threat to American health care. After Trump tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), he is threatening to do it again — even as 45 million Americans rely on the law for coverage. Not only has Trump vowed to repeal the ACA, but he plans to slash Medicaid and Medicare funding, raise prescription drug and premium costs, and strip away health care from millions of Americans.
When it comes to Donald Trump’s health care plan, look no further than Project 2025, a dangerous policy roadmap released by MAGA allies at the Heritage Foundation designed to hurt the middle class and give more tax breaks to big corporations and the wealthiest Americans. This plan details how Trump and his MAGA allies will work to raise costs for hardworking families, take away protections for pre-existing conditions, and give more tax breaks to drug and insurance companies.
- Trump and His Allies Will Keep Working To Repeal The ACA And The Inflation Reduction Act. During his first term, Trump notoriously tried and failed multiple times to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). All of the repeal bills that went through Congress would have caused millions of Americans to lose their health coverage and raised premiums for millions more. Trump’s repeal efforts would have imposed an “age tax” on older Americans and eliminated protections for more than 100 millions Americans with pre-existing conditions like asthma, cancer, and diabetes. During his 2024 campaign Trump has repeatedly reignited his calls to “terminate” the Affordable Care Act, which he claims is a “disaster,” and his MAGA allies in Congress are seeking to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act and its provisions making prescription drugs and health care premiums more affordable for tens of millions of Americans.
- Trump Will Pack The Courts With Right Wing Ideologues. After failing to repeal the health care law in his first year as President, Trump took his war on America’s health care to a new level and went to court seeking to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act — including protections for pre-existing conditions. During his term, Trump packed the federal courts with anti-health care extremists, including the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk who in the last two years alone has issued rulings that attempted to upend the entire FDA approval process and reject health protections for LGBTQ Americans.
- Trump Will Stand With Big Drug Companies Instead Of Working To Lower Drug Prices. Donald Trump came into office with a promise to lower drug costs, but instead, he gave drug companies billions in tax breaks. The year after his tax bill passed, the largest drug companies made $50 billion in profits and subsequently used their savings to invest billions more in stock buybacks for their shareholders. Meanwhile, thousands of drugs saw price increases during his administration. In a second term, Trump will try to repeal or weaken President Biden’s landmark legislation that allows Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices and will continue to fight to keep drug companies’ taxes low and protect their corporate loopholes.
- Trump Will Continue His War On Medicaid. A second Trump term will see a renewed war on Medicaid laid out in the Project 2025 agenda, which includes onerous paperwork requirements and block grants that would force radical cuts to Medicaid. Trump and his allies support cutting funding for Medicaid by over 50 percent. Between encouraging states to impose red tape and paperwork requirements masquerading as work requirements, Trump’s policies will end Medicaid as we know it. Their plan to gut Medicaid means millions of Americans would lose their health coverage, including seniors with long-term care needs, children in low-income families, people with disabilities and people suffering from mental illnesses.
- Trump Will Promote Policies Designed To Throw People Off Their Health Coverage. Census data revealed the uninsured rate rose during Trump’s tenure for the first time since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The rate increased from 7.9 percent in 2017 to 8.5 percent in 2018, or by approximately 2 million people. More than one million children lost Medicaid coverage between 2017 and 2019. Health care experts pointed to a “chilling effect” from Trump-backed policies, including Medicaid work reporting requirements. Trump’s anti-immigration policies create a climate of fear among the immigrant community and their family members, which will lead eligible people to forgo health care for themselves and their children. This especially contributed to increased uninsurance among Hispanic families during the first Trump administration.
- Trump Will Gut Medicare And Medicaid. Trump and his allies support raising the retirement age, stripping away benefits for future retirees, and cutting tens of billions of dollars from Medicare. Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget in 2019 would cut funding for Medicare by more than $800 billion and repeal the ACA. Additionally, the budget would cut $1.5 trillion from Medicaid, which would result in millions of people losing health coverage, cuts to nursing homes, and cuts to care for children with severe disabilities.
- Trump Will Put Big Drug And Insurance Companies Back In Charge While Eroding Access To Health Care. Trump’s proudest achievement during his term was signing into law a tax bill that cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations and increased health care premiums for people who buy their own coverage. Trump’s tax bill repealed a key provision of the Affordable Care Act that required most people to have health coverage, which formed the basis of the Trump-Republican lawsuit that sought to overturn the Affordable Care Act. Additionally, the repeal of the individual mandate contributed to thousands of dollars in increased premiums on the individual market. Trump is openly campaigning on more of the same tax cuts for giant corporations and billionaires if he regains office in 2024.
- Trump Is Responsible For The Repeal of Roe v. Wade And The Devastating Consequences for Reproductive Health. Donald Trump boasts that his appointees to the Supreme Court “broke Roe v. Wade” and the consequences for women’s health have been catastrophic, from cruel and archaic abortion bans to devastating uncertainty about access to IVF and other reproductive care. A second term would see more extreme judicial appointments and an all out push to use the Comstock Act to create a de facto national ban on abortions and sharply limit access to medications like mifepristone.
- Trump Will Sabotage The ACA And Push People Into Junk Plans That Do Not Include Protections For Pre-Existing Conditions. In 2017, the Trump administration cut the outreach advertising budget for Open Enrollment by 90 percent, from $100 million to just $10 million – which resulted in as many as 1.1 million fewer people getting covered. The Trump administration also slashed funding for non-profit health Navigator groups that help people shop for coverage from $36 million to $10 million. Trump’s CMS encouraged groups to use the remaining funds to push people to sign up for junk plans that skirt important consumer protections, like coverage of prescription drugs and maternity care. Project 2025 includes plans to build on Trump’s efforts to promote junk plans that do not need to cover people with pre-existing conditions.
- Trump’s Will Work To Discriminate Against Women, People of Color And LGBTQ Americans. The Trump administration took multiple steps to make it harder for women, people of color, and LGBTQ Americans to access health care. For example, in August 2019, the Trump administration began enforcing a rule that bars certain federally-funded clinics from referring women for abortions. As a result, the nation’s largest recipient of Title X funds, Planned Parenthood, was forced to exit the program, losing $60 million in funding previously used to provide birth control and reproductive health care services for low-income women. Moreover, experts pointed to Trump’s immigration policies for having deterred many Latino families from getting coverage, resulting in steep coverage losses, especially for children. Trump also tried to make it easier for transgender Americans to be discriminated against in health care settings and allowed providers’ to refuse patient care on the basis of the provider’s personal beliefs, a move that undermined access to care for patients who already face health care disparities. A second Trump term would promise more of the same, with his allies already signaling that they plan to dramatically change the government’s interpretation of civil rights laws to focus on bogus “anti-white racism” rather than discrimination against people of color.