Trump promises to ‘terminate’ Obamacare if elected again
Trump has vowed to get rid of Obamacare for 8 years, but has never released a detailed replacement plan.
Former President Donald Trump implied he would “terminate” Obamacare if elected again in 2024, saying in a post on his social media site Truth Social that he is “seriously looking at alternatives.”
“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!” Trump wrote on Nov. 25.
Trump has long said he would get rid of the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement.
He campaigned on repealing and replacing the ACA, better known as Obamacare, in his 2016 bid for president.
“When we win on Nov. 8 and elect a Republican Congress, we will be able to immediately repeal and replace Obamacare,” Trump said right before the 2016 election.
However, he has never provided a detailed proposal of what his replacement plan would look like.
That didn’t stop Trump from trying to repeal Obamacare after he took office in January 2017.
With full control of Congress and the White House, congressional Republicans launched an effort that year to repeal and replace Obamacare. Yet the effort failed after a loud public outcry against the GOP’s replacement bills, which nonpartisan analyses said would cause millions of people to lose their health insurance coverage, as well as raise health care costs for millions of others.
In May 2017, the House of Representatives passed a repeal bill that would have ended the expansion of Medicaid, which would have caused 24 million people to lose their health insurance. The GOP-controlled Senate, however, did not pass a repeal bill after three Republicans joined all Democrats in voting it down.
While it didn’t succeed, the repeal effort helped lead to a Democratic wave in the 2018 midterms when Democrats won back control of the House after promising to stop the GOP efforts to get rid of protections for people with preexisting conditions.
The politics of repealing Obamacare were so bad for the GOP that congressional Republicans have abandoned their efforts to get rid of the law.
Yet ahead of the 2024 Republican presidential primary, Trump is saying he’ll revive the effort if he makes it back into office.
After Trump sent the Truth Social post about his desire to repeal Obamacare, Democrats started sounding alarm bells.
“First, they came for women’s health/choice, now they’re coming for ALL of our health care!” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) tweeted.
Democratic campaign strategists say they will call attention to Trump’s repeal plan in the 2024 election.
“Donald Trump has been remarkably consistent on two things re: health care: 1) He wants to repeal Obamacare. 2) He’s got a mysterious and ‘tremendous’ health care plan he’s been promising to roll out since 2015,” Christina Reynolds, senior vice president of communications at EMILY’s List, tweeted. “Believe him at your own risk.”
