Shefali Luthra
Originally published by The 19th
Following former President Donald Trump’s renewed interest in repealing the Affordable Care Act if elected president, the Harris campaign is investing in a new series of advertisements touting the law’s effects.
The ads, part of a larger $370 million paid media effort, will air during national programs including “Dancing with the Stars,” “Survivor” and the American Music Awards. While emphasizing the health law’s effects for Americans with preexisting medical conditions, they underscore its disproportionate impact on women, telling the story of Yamelisa Taveras, a Latina from Pennsylvania with diabetes, and of Tina Hinchley, a Wisconsin dairy farmer and survivor of both breast cancer and a brain tumor.
“Donald Trump says he wants to kill the Affordable Care Act,” Hinchley says in one of the ads. “He doesn’t care what that would mean for families like mine.”
The campaign is also unveiling a new digital ad, shared first with The 19th, focusing on Trump’s anti-abortion record. In that ad, Trump repeats the phrase “I have every other part of your body” — an excerpt from a speech in which he said “I have your heart, and I have every other part of your body” — as news headlines flash across the screen, highlighting Trump’s and other Republicans’ connections to anti-abortion policy.
Coming in the final five weeks of the election, the advertising push suggests that Harris, who has campaigned aggressively on abortion rights, is now emphasizing broad differences between the candidates on how they approach health care more generally.
It could be a potent argument. More than 60 percent of Americans say they support the Affordable Care Act, which has been in effect for almost 15 years, in large part because of its protections for people with preexisting medical conditions.
The law, passed in 2010 under then-President Barack Obama, prohibited insurance plans from charging people more based on their medical history, which it achieved by putting beneficiaries in a single risk pool. As a result, people who use less health care can effectively subsidize those who need more, without sicker people being charged higher premiums or deductibles.
That had a heightened impact for women, who use more health care than men and who, as a result, often had to pay more for insurance prior to the law’s passage. And it also had distinct benefits for people who can get pregnant. Before 2010, insurance didn’t have to cover pregnancy-related health care, which can be particularly expensive, even beyond the cost of labor and delivery.
As president, Trump tried and failed multiple times to repeal the law. He also cut funding for the navigators who help people enroll in health insurance and loosened regulations for short-term health plans, which aren’t required to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s standards and often don’t provide benefits such as maternity care.
At a September debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump said he had “concepts of a plan” to replace the health law. Since then, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, his running mate, has suggested that would include creating cheaper, less comprehensive health insurance options for people who use less medical care — effectively restoring the system that existed before the Affordable Care Act took effect.
The topic arose again at Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, when Vance, pressed to explain how Trump would protect people with preexisting conditions, suggested the president wanted to give states power “to experiment a little bit on how to cover both the chronically ill, but the non-chronically ill.”
In response, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, argued that such an approach would likely lead to less affordable health care options for people with preexisting medical conditions.
“What that means to you is you lose your preexisting conditions [protections],” he said. “If you’re sitting at home and you got asthma, too bad. If you’re a woman, probably not. Broke your foot during football, might kick you out.”
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