President Joe Biden has repeatedly warned voters on the campaign trail that his opponent, former President Donald Trump, would take away their health care if he regains the White House.
The Biden campaign responded by telling PolitiFact that Trump’s single post on improving Obamacare needs to be compared with his repeated threats to dismantle it.
“Here is a fact Truth Social posts and transparently false spin from his campaign can’t fix: Donald Trump tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act and rip away health care from millions when he was president — and has promised to do it again. Repeatedly,” Ammar Moussa, Biden-Harris campaign director of rapid response, wrote in an email.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s position on the Affordable Care Act during the 2024 campaign
Trump said multiple times on Truth Social in November and December that he would try to replace Obamacare, before backtracking in March.
Ultimately, experts said, it comes down to whether he prioritizes it; if he gets the support of key health care industry players; how many Republicans are on board, and the level of control they have in Congress.
“There aren’t that many great legislative opportunities because people haven’t done the work, they haven’t built the roster of ready-to-go bills and popularized them,” Miller said. “So, that’s why they go back to codify regulations so they can be more permanent, or stretch things a little more on the margins; but that’s not the same as something transformational.”
“Trump’s plan would be in favor of what works for him politically,” Miller said. Trump, he said, doesn’t appear to hold a deep set of “beliefs in the health care or health policy space. He has that for other issues, but not as much for the health care area, so other people fill in the blanks for him.”
Sabrina Corlette, a research professor and co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, said she wouldn’t expect the same sweeping repeal attempt that Trump tried before because the political support isn’t there. Still, she said, he could dismantle it a little at a time.
Corlette also pointed out that the law is massive — it covers insurance reforms, preexisting condition protections, marketplace plans, Medicare and Medicaid regulations, tax law provisions, and more — further complicating making determinations on what Trump would or could do.
“It’s hard to know what you can take away from Trump’s statement with respect to the ACA,” Corlette said. “But I think people can make the assessment that a number, maybe not all, but a number of the ACA’s insurance reforms — like the insurance minimum benefits and pre-existing condition protections — if not fully repealed, those could be rolled back so that insurers will have a lot more flexibility to charge more or deny certain types of care.”
PolitiFact ruling
Biden said Trump wants to terminate the Affordable Care Act.
In 2016, Trump campaigned on a promise to repeal and replace the ACA. In the White House, Trump supported a failed effort to do just that. In the years since, he has repeatedly stated his intent to dismantle the health care law, including in campaign stops and social media posts throughout 2023.
In March, however, Trump signaled a change in stance, publishing one Truth Social post in which he said that he wasn’t running to terminate the ACA but to make it “better” and “less expensive.”
Trump hasn’t released other details or said how he would do this. His campaign platform includes nothing on the ACA. And his campaign didn’t answer our questions about his plan. Health care policy experts identified an array of possible changes — some big, some small — that could be executed under another Trump administration but said a sweeping repeal likely isn’t in the cards due to a lack of support.
After years of Trump’s anti-ACA rhetoric and action, the former president’s stated change of position represents an important detail that Biden’s statement fails to acknowledge. We rate it Half True.
