About a week ago, The New York Times published a curious report on the “absence” of health care as a “top issue” in this year’s election cycle. “In nearly every major presidential race for decades, health care has been a central issue,” the Times’ report added, concluding that health care has become “a second-tier issue.”
A lot can change in a week.
The day the article was published, Vice President Kamala Harris relentlessly mocked Donald Trump for saying he has “concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act
Two days later, the former president’s running mate, Republican Sen. JD Vance, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and sketched out a plan that would undo core protections in the ACA related to Americans with pre-existing conditions.
On Wednesday, instead of backing down, the Ohio senator — who only arrived on Capitol Hill last year, and wasn’t around for “Obamacare” conflicts most of his colleagues remember well — doubled down, telling a North Carolina audience about his desire to move those with pre-existing conditions into separate insurance pools.
The Harris campaign responded in a statement soon after, “There should be no doubt about Donald Trump’s commitment to end the Affordable Care Act — he and House Republicans tried doing it over 60 times. Now, one of the ‘concepts’ he’s bringing back is his plan to rip away protections for pre-existing conditions, throw millions off their health care, and drive up costs for millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions.”
As a new Washington Post report explained, the rival campaigns are “reopening a health-care debate that Democrats are eager to have — and resurrecting a fight that has repeatedly burned the GOP.”
Experts said the ideas sketched out by Vance threaten consumer protections enshrined in the 2010 health law, such as rules that guarantee health coverage to the tens of millions of Americans with preexisting conditions. “I feel like I’ve been transported back to 2009,” said Adrianna McIntyre, a Harvard University health professor who has studied health insurance markets. “Prior to the Affordable Care Act, a number of states had these high-risk pools, and in general, they were hard for people to access.”
As a substantive matter, this is an important point: Vance might be new to the issue, but the United States has plenty of experience with the model he’s endorsed in recent days. It’s a model that didn’t work, and which the Affordable Care Act fixed.
The Republicans’ 2024 ticket, in other words, is surprisingly eager to roll back the clock for no good reason.
As the Post’s Catherine Rampell explained in her latest column, “Thanks to GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, we finally know what Donald Trump’s ‘concepts of a plan’ for ‘replacing the Affordable Care Act might look like. Unfortunately, those concepts would probably unravel the U.S. health-care system.”
Rampell concluded, “Remember this next time Vance or other Republicans promise you ‘choices’ in your health insurance. The real choice they’re offering you is the option of never getting sick.”
But as a political matter, all of this is unfolding with fewer than 50 days remaining in the presidential race, pushing health care back into the national spotlight as voters make their 2024 choices, and raising the stakes for the electorate.
It’s precisely why Ammar Moussa, the Harris campaign’s rapid response director, declared, “Health care is back on the ballot.” It’s the same Democratic campaign that organized 19 events with health care advocates in key states this week, shining a light on Trump’s and Vance’s views.
To the extent that health care was “a second-tier issue,” it’s not anymore.
