In an exchange about health care during the vice presidential debate on CBS Tuesday night, Sen. JD Vance claimed that Donald Trump took action to “salvage” the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, when he was president.
But in reality, Trump tried to kill the law that brought health insurance to millions.
Vance: Donald Trump has said that if we allow states to experiment a little bit, on how to cover both the chronically ill but the non-chronically ill, it’s not just a plan, he actually implemented some of these regulations when he was president of the United States.
And I think you could make a really good argument that it salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along.
In 2017, Trump backed the American Health Care Act, which would have repealed significant portions of Obamacare. According to data compiled by the Congressional Budget Office, if the legislation became law, 24 million people would go uninsured.
The bill passed through the House, which had a Republican majority at the time, and Trump celebrated in the Rose Garden of the White House with congressional leaders. But the bill ultimately failed in the Senate, due to unified opposition from Democrats along with Republican John McCain, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski.
Under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the health care law has been expanded to cover more people, and Harris has said that she will continue to back the law if she is elected president.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz continue to move the needle. Donate to their campaign to move that needle even more.