During his debate with Kamala Harris, when Donald Trump was challenged to say if he would repeal the Affordable Care Act, he claimed to have “concepts of a plan” that would result in a much better and less expensive approach to health care than the ACA.
As the Democratic National Committee said in its latest War Room dispatch, it was "the latest of Trump’s cop-outs, lies, and deflections in an attempt to distract the American people from the dark reality of his second term agenda."
Trump has been trying for years to kill the ACA, always claiming that he would bring improvements that would result in better and less expensive health care. In April, he declared in a video posted to Truth Social:
“I’m not running to terminate the ACA as crooked Joe Biden says all over the place. We’re going to make the ACA much better than it is right now and much less expensive for you.”
Those are almost the same words he used during the debate with Harris, but after serving as president for four years, no such plan ever emerged and the ACA is now relied upon by millions of Americans for their health care coverage.
It's in Project 2025
President Biden, and now Vice President Harris, have contended that Trump simply wants to rip away the ACA's coverage and instead make changes that would benefit private insurers and the health care industry, while eliminating coverage for pre-existing conditions.
It's just another Trump-GOP scam, and their plans can simply be found in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, a playbook that Republicans are pushing for the future on many fronts.
For more info on Project 2025's impact on the American people, please see our series of articles and specifically, the blog focused on health care.
As the DNC pointed out, "Trump’s Project 2025 agenda would accelerate efforts to privatize Medicare and raise prescription drug prices including by getting rid of the $35/month insulin price cap for seniors established thanks to President Biden and Vice President Harris’ historic Inflation Reduction Act."
In its War Room dispatch, the DNC also made these points about Trump's "plans":
Reproductive Health
Trump’s only “concepts of a plan” on reproductive health care are his Project 2025 plans to ban abortion nationwide, threaten access to IVF and contraception, and even monitor women’s pregnancies.
Question: “Would you veto a national abortion ban?”[…]Trump: “Look, we don’t have to discuss it.”
“Republicans will, unequivocally seek to ban all abortion and make abortion inaccessible nationwide; in addition to attempting to misuse the antiquated Comstock Act to ban medication abortion, a second Trump administration could attempt to misuse the dormant statute to criminalize materials used to provide basic abortion care,” said the Office of U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) regarding Project 2025.
“And by declaring that life begins at conception, his [Project 2025] manifesto appears to commit HHS to finding ways to outlaw IVF, which relies on generating multiple embryos, most of which are not implanted.The extensive mandate calls to gut reproductive freedom, including effectively banning medication abortion, ending access to emergency abortion care, attacking contraception, deploying fetal personhood, and undermining IVF in federal policy…Project 2025 would also give Trump unprecedented power to monitor pregnancies."
Here's more about Project 2025 and reproductive rights.
The Economy
Trump’s only “concepts of plan” on the economy is his Project 2025 agenda to line the pockets of his billionaire buddies with tax giveaways at the expense of middle-class families.
Trump, in response to his plans for the economy: “Everybody knows what I'm going to do. Cut taxes.”
Said Harris: "Donald Trump has no plan for you. And when you look at his economic plan, it's all about tax breaks for the richest people."
Trump’s Project 2025 tax plan would increase taxes on the middle class while giving handouts to greedy corporations and America’s wealthiest.
Border Security
Trump can’t defend his actions to tank bipartisan border security legislation for his own political gain.
When he was asked why he killed the bill that would have lput thousands of additional agents and officers on the border, Trump talked about the size of crowds at his rallies.
Said the DNC, "The Trump-Vance ticket will continue to prioritize political gains over policy priorities like he did when he killed the bipartisan border deal. They will work to instead implement a cruel agenda to round up people into detention camps and use the military to carry out mass deportations."