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You know former president Donald Trump.
He’s been talking about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare,” since before he ran for president in 2016.
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But now, on the ironically-named social media platform Truth Social, he claims he “never mentioned” or “even thought about” ending the ACA.
In the video, Rep. Johnson starts by speaking about a potential Trump administration having an “aggressive” agenda for its first 100 days, saying, “Healthcare reform’s gonna be a big part of the agenda.” An attendee asks about Obamacare, and in response, Johnson smirks, rolls his eyes, and says, “No Obamacare, no. The ACA is so deeply ingrained we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”
Johnson has since tried to walk back his comments in a statement to NBC News, saying, “Despite the dishonest characterizations from the Harris campaign, the audio and transcript make clear that I offered no such promise to end Obamacare, and in fact acknowledged that the policy is ‘deeply ingrained’ in our health care system.”
So, let’s talk about the ACA for a minute. Passed in 2010, this law bans insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, requires coverage for preventative care like regular cancer screenings, allows young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26, and created the state healthcare marketplaces that gave millions of Americans access to health insurance.
According to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as many as 129 million people could lose coverage as a result of a pre-existing condition. These conditions range from diabetes, heart disease, and cancer to asthma, anxiety, and even pregnancy. The data also shows that somewhere between 15 to 30% of people who are in “good health” today are likely to develop a pre-existing condition over the next eight years.
And despite the way we tend to talk about it in our culture, health isn’t as simple as a matter of personal responsibility or moral failings. We can’t pull ourselves into healthier bodies by our bootstraps without proper medical care, and getting sick isn’t a punishment for doing something wrong. As a 30-something breast cancer survivor, I can’t tell you how many times people have grasped at straws for some way to blame me for my diagnosis. Was it birth control pills? Was it sugar? The vaccine? Maybe she’s born with it; maybe it’s microplastics? Underneath all of these questions, I always hear an accusation: what did you do wrong?
The truth is that the human body is a delicate and complicated thing. There are a million and one ways we can be injured or fall ill, and, as my doctors have repeatedly assured me, it’s often impossible to tell why one person gets sick but another doesn’t. It’s unsettlingly random.
Democrat, Republican, or Independent, we’re all living out our days in these beautiful yet vulnerable meatsuits together. We all need healthcare, and repealing the ACA would be a huge step backward. It would also be a hugely unpopular move, which might explain why Trump is, yet again, trying to convince us that the things we’ve all seen and heard him say for over a decade never happened. Here’s hoping that on Tuesday, he gets a major dose of reality — hold the “alternative facts.”
How has the ACA helped you and your family? Share your story in the comments!
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