Trump and Harris bash each other over outdated health insurance positions

By Tami Luhby, CNN

(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have been attacking each other’s health insurance positions, warning what Americans could lose if their rival is elected president in November.

“She wants to outlaw private health insurance,” Trump said Friday at the conservative Turning Point Action’s Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida. “A lot of people have private health insurance. They want to keep it that way. It’s phenomenal.”

The next day, Harris said at a fundraising event in Pittsfield, Massachusetts: “He intends to end the Affordable Care Act and take us back to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with preexisting conditions. You guys remember what that was? It was real. Children with asthma. Breast cancer survivors. Grandparents with diabetes.”

Facts first: Neither Trump’s nor Harris’ claims reflect their rival’s most recent positions on health insurance. Trump most recently said he wants to improve the Affordable Care Act, not terminate it, though he promised for years that he would repeal it. Harris included a role for private insurers in the plan she released during her 2020 presidential campaign, though she had previously said she wanted to eliminate private insurance.

Health insurance has been one of the most contentious issues in recent elections, both for the White House and Congress. Trump and Harris have both changed their stances on health care coverage, though neither has issued a detailed policy solution in this campaign. (Note: Harris only jumped into the race a little over a week ago when President Joe Biden announced he would not be running. She has yet to issue her policy platform.)

Here’s a look at how their public positions have evolved.

Harris on private health insurance

Let’s start with Trump’s claim that Harris wants to do away with private health insurance. At a CNN town hall in January 2019, Harris, who was then a California senator vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, said that she would eliminate private health insurance as a necessary part of implementing Medicare for All, a government-run health insurance proposal promoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders. Harris was a co-sponsor of Sanders’ bill, which called for essentially getting rid of the private insurance market.

“The idea is that everyone gets access to medical care, and you don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require,” Harris said at the town hall, arguing that private health insurers are motivated by profits. “Who of us has not had that situation, where you’ve got to wait for approval, and the doctor says, ‘Well, I don’t know if your insurance company is going to cover this?’ Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”

A furor erupted, and her national press secretary and an adviser quickly walked back her comment, saying she was open to multiple paths to Medicare for All. And the plan she rolled out in July 2019 included a role for private insurance.

“We will allow private insurers to offer Medicare plans as a part of this system that adhere to strict Medicare requirements on costs and benefits,” Harris wrote in a Medium post about her plan. “Medicare will set the rules of the road for these plans, including price and quality, and private insurance companies will play by those rules, not the other way around.”

Since she was named Biden’s vice president, she has supported his efforts to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, which has led to a record number of people signing up for 2024 coverage from private insurers on the individual market.

Harris’ campaign confirmed this week that the vice president no longer supports a single-payer health care system.

Trump on the Affordable Care Act

Trump has long wanted to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, making it one of his top priorities in his 2016 presidential campaign and first term. However, even though Republicans controlled Congress and the White House the following year, they failed to unite behind a plan to do so, ending any serious attempts to completely overhaul the landmark health reform law, popularly known as Obamacare.

The former president revived the debate over the law’s fate in November 2023, when he wrote on his Truth Social platform that he’s “seriously looking at alternatives” and that the failure to terminate it “was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!”

Some Republicans, however, were alarmed by Trump’s call, concerned that the issue is a political loser with Americans.

Trump also quickly walked back his comments, posting a few days later that he doesn’t “want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE.
Obamacare Sucks!!!”

In April, Trump said in a video posted to Truth Social: “I’m not running to terminate the ACA as crooked Joe Biden says all over the place. We’re going to make the ACA much better than it is right now and much less expensive for you.”

However, he has yet to release a proposal on how he would make the Affordable Care Act better and less expensive.

Asked for comment, Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika noted that Trump has said to never give up on terminating Obamacare.

“Donald Trump, a known liar, has been clear about one thing: if he’s elected, he will repeal the Affordable Care Act, rip away health care from tens of millions of Americans, eliminate coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions like diabetes or cancer, and kick young people off their parents’ insurance – just as he tried to do multiple times the last time he was in the White House,” she said.

The Trump campaign did not return a request for comment.

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