J.D. Vance Reveals Atrocious Little Detail of Trump’s Health Care Plan

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has shared some details about the Trump-Vance campaign’s health care plan, and it appears to allow insurers to charge more for preexisting conditions.

Vance gave details on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, where he told Kristen Welker that Donald Trump’s plan involves “deregulating insurance markets, so that people can actually choose a plan that makes sense for them.”

JD Vance on what Trump's healthcare plan actually is: "Deregulating the insurance markets so that people can choose a plan that actually makes sense for them." pic.twitter.com/gYhFBubovT

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 15, 2024

This would appear to roll back some of the Affordable Care Act, which got rid of insurance companies’ ability to deny coverage based on preexisting conditions. Prior to President Obama’s legislation, it was difficult to get affordable health care coverage except through Medicare, Medicaid, or employer-based plans. While health care plans were available outside of that, insurers sought profits by weeding out people likely to require medical care.

Vance said that under Donald Trump’s plan, Americans wouldn’t be put “into the same risk pools.” In other words, healthier young people wouldn’t be in the same risk pool as older people more likely to need medical care, lowering costs for younger Americans. But doing so, as Vance suggests, would come at the expense of much higher charges for everyone else—especially older Americans and those with pre-existing conditions. Right now, the law allows insurance companies to bill older people up to three times as much as they do for the young, Vance is talking about making that gap even higher.

It’s much worse than Trump’s answer about his health care plan during last week’s presidential debate, when the former president said that he had “concepts of a plan” and was widely mocked. Vance’s plan existed before the ACA, and left many Americans, particularly with preexisting conditions, stuck with expensive plans that didn’t cover their issues.

The ACA was passed 14 years ago, and despite multiple efforts to repeal the plan or gut its provisions, Republicans have been largely unsuccessful. It appears that they also still don’t have any ideas to replace it except restoring the previous flawed system, which would put many Americans at risk of losing coverage. Democrats need to sound the alarm.