Presented by Novavax — Former President Trump says he is ‘seriously looking’ at ObamaCare alternatives
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The Big Story
Biden campaign jumps into ObamaCare fight
President Biden’s reelection campaign is enthusiastically jumping into a fight with former President Trump over the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare.
Over the holiday weekend, Trump posted on his Truth Social account that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the 13-year-old law, and that the failure to repeal the law while he was in the White House in 2017 was “a low point for the Republican Party.”
Still, he said “we should never give up!”
Republicans don’t have a plan to replace ObamaCare. When Trump was president and Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress, they tried and failed to repeal the law. Three GOP-led attempts to repeal the law through the courts have also failed, including one backed by Trump in 2020.
Since then, GOP members have largely conceded that an ObamaCare fight is a losing issue and have instead focused on issues like crime, immigration and the economy.
Still, President Biden and his reelection team is more than happy to engage and amplify Trump’s claims, which were made in reaction to an editorial published in The Wall Street Journal.
“My predecessor, once again — God love him — called for cuts that could rip away health insurance for tens of millions of Americans on Medicaid,” Biden said Monday. “They don’t give up. But guess what, we won’t let these things happen.”
Biden’s team pointed to polling from the health policy research group KFF, which in May found nearly 60 percentof the public had a favorable view of the health law. Democrats retook control of the House in 2018 after making the GOP repeal efforts the center of their campaigns, promising to protect Americans from losing coverage for preexisting conditions.
“40 million people – more than 1 in 10 Americans – have health insurance today because of the Affordable Care Act and Donald Trump just said he would try to rip it away if he returns to power. He was one vote away from getting it done when he was president – and we should take him at his word that he’ll try to do it again,” Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement.
The campaign has also enlisted popular Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper to act as a health care messaging surrogate. North Carolina is a key battleground state, and Cooper was able to shepherd Medicaid expansion through the GOP-controlled legislature this year.
The law will officially take effect on Friday, making North Carolina the 40th state to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare. Cooper and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who presided over passage of ObamaCare in 2010, will hold a press call for the campaign Tuesday.
Welcome to The Hill’s Health Care newsletter, we’re Nathaniel Weixel and Joseph Choi — every week we follow the latest moves on how Washington impacts your health.
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Dr. Julie Louise Gerberding, CEO, FNIH
Nancy Glick, Director of Food and Nutrition Policy, NCL
Dr. Céline Gounder, editor-at-large, Public Health
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