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topicnews · October 1, 2024

Harris-Walz campaign confronts Trump-Vance team over health care

Harris-Walz campaign confronts Trump-Vance team over health care

The Trump campaign responded by accusing, among other things, that Harris wanted to “bankrupt the country” by providing free health care to undocumented immigrants.

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Some Arizonans with pre-existing conditions may be unable to access health care under a second Donald Trump administration, the campaign of his presidential rival Kamala Harris concluded in a new analysis released a day before the vice presidential debate.

Details released so far about the health care strategies of Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, have “dangerous consequences for Arizona,” the Harris campaign says, and health insurers will also do “Again, decide based on how healthy or unhealthy you are.”

Vance is scheduled to debate Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on Tuesday at 6 p.m. Arizona time at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City.

The Trump campaign responded Monday, accusing Harris of wanting to “bankrupt the country” by giving free health care to undocumented immigrants, among other attacks on her health care platform.

“President Trump will finish what he started in his first term and repair what (Vice President) Harris and (President Joe) Biden broke,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in an email. Email message to the Arizona Republic.

“President Trump is calling for the largest deportation program since President Eisenhower to end the financial burden on our health care system and ensure our country can continue to care for American citizens who rely on Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security – not illegal immigrants. ” she wrote.

The Harris campaign says the health care plan “concepts” unveiled so far by Trump and Vance would result in millions more Americans going without health insurance: from the current 29.6 million to 53.5 million under its health care strategy, it says the analysis published on Monday morning.

“The people who will benefit most from Trump’s plan to raise costs and eliminate health insurance for the middle class are billionaires, who will receive an average tax cut of $3.5 million each year,” it says the analysis. “Every decision Trump makes is designed to help himself or his wealthy friends, and this one is no different.”

The Harris and Walz team’s analysis says Trump and Vance would put more than 2.8 million Arizonans with pre-existing conditions at risk of being denied health insurance or being charged thousands of dollars more under one idea for high-risk pools, which Vance spoke about during a Sept. 25 visit to North Carolina.

“More than 100 million Americans with pre-existing conditions could be denied coverage or charged more – taking us back to the days when people with pre-existing conditions had to fend for themselves,” the analysis says.

According to the Harris campaign, asthma, opioid use disorder and even pregnancy could become pre-existing conditions that insurance companies could use to deny coverage under another Trump presidency.

“Trump and Vance attempted to hide the details of their plan by not publicly releasing it at any point, even though both Trump and Vance have publicly shared the ‘concept’ of their plan for a year,” they said in a written statement the Harris campaign.

“They have an idea of ​​a plan, and their concept is this: You’re on your own,” the analysis says.

Trump campaign says he will ‘fix what Harris and Biden broke’

The analysis released Monday said a Trump-Vance administration would roll back the Biden-Harris administration’s work to control drug prices, but Trump’s presidential campaign argued in its response to the analysis that Trump was responsible for the drop in drug prices be.

Trump’s campaign says that in 2018, when he was serving his first term, Trump took aggressive actions that led to lower drug prices, citing Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which raised insulin prices for Medicare recipients to $35 per month, as a “fraud”. “stole billions from Medicare for “green energy subsidies for the rich.”

The Inflation Reduction Act’s $35 monthly cap on Medicare insulin prices is a measure that President Joe Biden has touted as one of the greatest achievements of his presidency. The Congressional Budget Office found that the Inflation Reduction Act’s prescription drug provisions could reduce the federal deficit by $237 billion over the next decade.

The Trump campaign heavily criticized Biden’s decision in May to expand eligibility for Affordable Care Act/Obamacare health insurance to DACA recipients.

DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and the group is often referred to as Dreamers. The Dreamers include about 530,000 people, including 20,130 Arizonans who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children by their parents or relatives and are protected from deportation by an Obama-era program.

About half of undocumented immigrants lack health insurance, more than five times the share of uninsured U.S. citizens, according to a Feb. 8 report from the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund. According to the report, people who are uninsured have limited access to health care and are at increased risk of incurring medical debt.

Harris said she wants to improve pathways to citizenship and increase security at the border to reduce the number of people entering the U.S. illegally. Biden signed an executive order in June aimed at reducing the number of asylum seekers entering the U.S., and since then encounters with migrants have fallen by 40%, federal officials said.

The Trump campaign also claims that Harris wants to eliminate private health insurance, which is not part of her platform. She supported continuing subsidies to make health insurance more affordable for individuals and families under the Affordable Care Act, often known as Obamacare. Obamacare is private health insurance available to individuals and families on state and federal marketplaces, with federal subsidies for those who qualify.

Harris also supports state policies, including in Arizona, that have expanded Medicaid to help the state’s health insurance program cover more low-income people. In Arizona, Medicaid, known as the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, or AHCCCS (pronounced “access”), covered 2.2 million state residents as of September, representing nearly 30% of the state’s population.

Medicaid fraud: 60 Arizona providers and patients say they will sue over Medicaid fraud

The number of uninsured Arizonans fell by 1 million after Obamacare

The Harris campaign on Monday raised Trump’s criticism of the Affordable Care Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010 and which expanded health insurance coverage and preventive care across the United States.

In 2010, approximately 1.8 million Arizonans lacked health insurance. According to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research organization, the number of uninsured Arizonans was 743,700 in 2022. According to KFF, about 20 previously uninsured Americans nationwide gained health insurance following the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

One of the key tenets of the Affordable Care Act was to tell insurance companies that they could not deny anyone health insurance because of a pre-existing condition – an issue that had previously left millions of Americans struggling to find health insurance that would cover them.

Trump has previously denounced the Affordable Care Act, posting “Obamacare sucks” on social media last year and expressing a desire to replace it. During the debate against Harris on September 10, Trump called the Affordable Care Act “bad health care” but, as in the past, offered no details about how he would replace it.

“If we can come up with a plan that costs our people, our population less money and provides better health care than Obamacare, then I would definitely do it. But until then, I would implement it as best as I can,” he said.

Reach health reporter Stephanie Innes at [email protected] or follow her on X, earlier Twitter: @stephanieinnes.

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