Disagreement over the Affordable Care Act in the 2024 Biden-Trump rematch carries on.
On March 26, former President Donald Trump took to Truth Social, the online platform under the Trump Media umbrella, to state that he plans to improve the 2010 healthcare law — not terminate it. The social media post, verbatim with typos, reads:
"I'm not running to terminate the ACA, AS CROOKED JOE BUDEN DISINFORMATES AND MISINFORMATES ALL THE TIME, I'm running to CLOSE THE BORDER, STOP INFLATION, MAKE OUR ECONOMY GREAT, STRENGTHEN OUR MILITARY, AND MAKE THE ACA, or OBAMACARE, AS IT IS KNOWN, MUCH BETTER, STRONGER, AND FAR LESS EXPENSIVE."
Mr. Trump used Truth Social in November 2023 to note that healthcare would be a focus of his administration if he secures the presidency. "I don't want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE," he wrote. "Obamacare Sucks!!!!"
Mr. Trump's latest comments arrive as President Joe Biden and Democrats lean into the ACA in the reelection campaign. On March 23, the Biden campaign released a video about the ACA featuring him with former President Barack Obama and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking to the law's origins and effects.
"Now Trump keeps telling us he's going to terminate the ACA," President Biden said in the video. "Think about what that means. It would mean 100 million people Americans with preexisting conditions would lose their healthcare coverage. It would mean young people would be kicked off their parents' coverage. Tens of millions of Americans would lose healthcare coverage as a consequence."
Mr. Trump has not provided details on replacement or amending legislation to the ACA, but said this week that he wants to make the "ACA MUCH, MUCH, MUCH BETTER FOR FAR LESS MONEY (OR COST) TO OUR GREST AMERICAN CITIZENS," again verbatim from his Truth Social post.
Over 20 million people have enrolled in individual insurance plans on the ACA exchange for 2024, CMS said Jan. 10. The enrollment total is the highest in the exchange's history, surpassing last year's enrollment of 16 million.
The ACA is the most challenged statute in American history, including its seven Supreme Court challenges in a decade, according to professors at Washington, D.C.-based Georgetown University.
Most recently, in 2021, the Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to the ACA, in which plaintiffs argued that the law should be struck down due to the 2017 elimination of the ACA's tax penalty. At the time of the Republicans' push for a "skinny repeal" of the ACA in 2017, Newsweek identified at least 70 GOP-led attempts to repeal, modify or limit the Affordable Care Act since its inception.