Donald Trump still has “concepts of a plan” to replace Obamacare, which he has been badmouthing for years, but you know why that is – because it’s associated with our first Black president.
“Obamacare stinks. It’s lousy. There are better answers,” Trump said in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that was broadcast on Sunday.
So, there are “better answers.”
Thing is, he doesn’t have them.
“If we come up with a better answer,” Trump went on, because, see there, he doesn’t have a “better answer,” “I would present that answer to Democrats and to everybody else, and I’d do something about it.”
More than 50 million people are currently enrolled in Marketplace or Medicaid expansion coverage under provisions of the Affordable Care Act, according to the Treasury Department.
That’s one in seven Americans.
More than 18 million have signed on since the beginning of President Biden’s term in the White House, with the president and Congress lowering the cost of marketplace coverage by expanding the premium tax credit.
This expansion reduced premiums of available plans to $10 or less per month for four in five customers in the federal marketplace, HealthCare.Gov, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Families over 400 percent of the federal poverty level, about $58,000 for a single person and $120,000 for a family of four for 2024 enrollment, gained access to the Affordable Care Act premium tax credit for the first time under the Biden-Harris administration.
People in Republican-led states make up the bulk of those benefitting from the ACA. Those states are the ones that, for political reasons, have resisted expanding their Medicaid programs.
Twenty percent of the population in Republican non-expansion states have enrolled in an ACA marketplace plan, compared to 12 percent of the population in expansion states.
Virginia, incidentally, started out as a non-expansion state, because Republicans were in control of the governor’s office and the Virginia General Assembly when the ACA was enacted in 2010.
It took until 2019 for us to finally get a vote for expansion, again, because of politics.
And now Trump wants to undo the whole thing, and replace it with, “concepts of a plan.”
“Let me explain. We have the biggest healthcare companies looking at it. We have doctors who are always looking,” Trump said, adding later, “I’ve always tinkered with it. I think, it’s a little hard to explain. Obamacare, when I took it over, was a disaster.”
The uncomfortable truth to this is, the bulk of those who are about to lose their access to health insurance voted for this guy.
Video: Trump still just has ‘concepts’
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Chris Graham
