A newly published poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a nonpartisan organization that promotes stronger health care strategies across the U.S., finds that if former President Donald Trump aims to make ending the Affordable Care Act (ACA) a priority in his 2024 campaign, he’ll be doing so at his own detriment.
The ACA, commonly known as Obamacare, eases the burdens of many Americans by providing subsidies for their health insurance spending. The law also includes a ban on insurers denying coverage based on a person’s preexisting health conditions.
The law is by no means perfect — progressive critics of the ACA note that it empowers private health insurance companies and fails to bring the country closer to a single-payer health care option. But comments from Trump last month suggest that he’s ready to ditch the law in its entirety.
As president, Trump pushed legislation to end the ACA. However, three Republican senators joined with Democrats to stop the repeal, and Republicans largely gave up trying to repeal the law afterward.
In late November, Trump reinvigorated his calls for eliminating the ACA on his social media site Truth Social.
“We had a couple of Republican Senators who campaigned for 6 years against it, and then raised their hands not to terminate it,” Trump said in his post. “It was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!”
Trump’s comments could reignite interest in an issue that Republicans — who have failed dozens of times to end the ACA — have tried to back away from, as they have come to see repeal of the law as a political liability. Indeed, at the start of this year, the idea of pushing for repeal was so adamantly rejected by Republicans that many doubted it would be an issue in the 2024 presidential election at all.
“I haven’t seen any evidence that [potential GOP candidates for president] are looking to relitigate at this point a 12-year-old law,” Sen. J.D. Vance said in February.
The KFF poll published over the weekend suggests that Trump, if he continues to push for repeal in the GOP primaries and in the eventual general election season, will hurt his chances of defeating President Joe Biden next fall.
According to the poll, inflation and the cost of household expenses is the top concern for most voters. But coming in at second place is the affordability of health care, with 80 percent of voters describing it as a “very important” topic for the presidential race.
The ACA itself is ranked lower in terms of importance for voters. But even though the law hasn’t been widely discussed or featured in headlines over the past year, nearly half of voters (49 percent) still deem it a very important issue for the election.
That number could go up if threats to the law from Trump or other lawmakers continue. The poll also shows that 6 in 10 voters say Democrats are more trustworthy in handling issues pertaining to the ACA.
Other polling demonstrates that the health care law is hugely popular — a survey conducted in May of this year found that 59 percent of voters view the ACA favorably, while just 40 percent have an unfavorable view of the law.
Democratic Party campaign strategists have indicated that they intend to make Trump’s call to end the ACA a major talking point during the campaign. In late November, the Biden campaign produced a political ad that featured a pediatric nurse lauding the administration’s moves to lower prescription drug costs and warning against repealing the ACA.
“The idea that we could go back to the policies that helped the rich get richer and left so many people behind — I don’t want to go back,” the nurse says in the ad. “We can’t go back.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy