Democrats are pouncing on former President Donald Trump’s pledge to find alternatives to Obamacare, a repeal-and-replace mantra that proved costly for Republicans in past election cycles.
Mr. Trump, writing on his social media platform, said “the cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare.”
“I’m seriously looking at alternatives,” he wrote over the weekend.
Liberals responded with glee and signaled they would take a double-barreled approach to attacking Mr. Trump and the GOP on health care in the 2024 elections.
They tied Mr. Trump’s renewed interest in scrapping the Affordable Care Act to his role in appointing three Supreme Court justices who helped to overturn the national right to abortion, opening the door to states’ limits on the procedure.
“First, they came for women’s health/choice, now they’re coming for ALL of our health care!” Rep. Eric Swalwell, California Democrat, wrote Monday on X.
The White House also tied Republican efforts to weaken Obamacare with efforts to repeal a Democratic program that allows Medicare to negotiate down the price of prescription drugs.
“Congressional Republicans keep proving that the top objective of MAGAnomics is tax giveaways for rich special interests, even if it means major price hikes on families,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said in a Monday memo.
Mr. Trump and Republican congressional majorities failed to repeal and replace Obamacare when they had the chance in 2017.
Efforts to undo the 2010 law’s protections for persons with preexisting medical conditions and premium subsidies proved unpopular. House Republicans nudged a repeal bill across the finish line, but Senate Republicans couldn’t rally around a version, and then-Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who died in 2018, doomed the effort with a late-night thumbs down on the Senate floor.
Mr. Trump and Republicans did zero out the law’s unpopular mandated penalty for failing to acquire health insurance. But the fumbled repeal effort proved politically costly, with Republicans losing the House in 2018 before winning it back two cycles later in 2022.
Mr. Trump, the 2024 front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, said Republicans should finish the job.
“We had a couple of Republican Senators who campaigned for 6 years against it, and then raised their hands not to terminate it. It was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!” Mr. Trump wrote.
It’s unclear whether there is much appetite among Republicans for revisiting health care. The law and its benefits are deeply entrenched.
President Biden increased subsidies that defray the cost of insurance, driving up enrollment in Obamacare. The number of people with individual-market insurance exceeded 18 million in the first quarter this year, putting it close to a high-water mark of 19.8 million in the late Obama years, according to KFF.
More than 18 million additional persons are eligible for Medicaid insurance because of Obamacare, and more and more red states are opting to accept generous federal funding that made Medicaid expansion possible.
Democrats see the issue as a political winner, even if Republicans don’t accept Mr. Trump’s challenge.
“The Affordable Care Act has been a life-changing law passed by President Obama and bolstered by President Biden,” the Biden campaign said in an email blast that highlighted surveys on Obamacare’s popularity. “Donald Trump adding repealing the ACA to the laundry-list of deeply unpopular MAGA agenda items is the latest reason why his extremist, out-of-touch proposals will once again be rejected by the American people next November.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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