Trump admitted he still has no health care plan. What that means for Virginia

Repeal of the Affordable Care Act would kick 647,768 Virginia residents off of insurance plans and limit the health insurance coverage for hundreds of thousands more.

At last night’s presidential debate, former president Donald Trump was asked a simple question: does he have a health care plan for America? 

Trump’s instantly meme-able response: “I have concepts of a plan.” 

It was a telling moment for Trump, ever the showman who favors bombastic claims over substantive policies and who has long been fond of attacking the Affordable Care Act, which is also known as Obamacare. 

Yet while he has repeatedly been against the ACA, he has never explained what he would replace it with, if anything. And given he’s been running for president or serving as president for well over nine years now, it seems the real answer is obvious: he’d replace it with nothing.

The landmark health care reform legislation was enacted by former president Barack Obama in 2010 and has since helped more than 45 million Americans get health insurance coverage, including hundreds of thousands of Virginians from November 2023 to January 2024 alone. 

“Donald Trump tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act and he will try again,” Rhena Hicks, Freedom Virginia’s co-executive director said in an email statement. “If he succeeds, the more than 400,000 Virginians who signed up for affordable insurance through Virginia’s new state health exchange would have their health care ripped away from them.”

Because of the Affordable Care Act, Virginia was able to expand health care to hundreds of thousands of people by expanding Medicaid, according to Ashley Kenneth, President and CEO of The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis. Repeal of the Affordable Care Act would be “particularly devastating in Virginia,” Kenneth said. 

Kenneth noted that a repeal of the ACA like the effort spearheaded by Republicans in 2017 would kick 647,768 Virginia residents out of Medicaid and remove the ability of Virginians to purchase health coverage through the Marketplace exchange, an option that is currently exercised by nearly 400,000 Virginians. 

Nearly 90% of people purchasing their plans through the marketplace in Virginia receive federal credits to make their premiums more affordable, which would be lost if the ACA was repealed, Kenneth said. Repealing the ACA would also scrap the medical loss ratio protections, which for the most recent year returned nearly $70 million to Virginia residents who were overcharged by insurance companies, Kenneth said. 

“We should be focused on protecting and building on this progress so that more of our friends and neighbors have access to comprehensive and affordable health insurance,” Kenneth said.

In contrast to Trump’s empty rhetoric, Vice President Kamala Harris has detailed plans for how to make healthcare more affordable for Americans, like capping insulin costs at $35 per month and limiting total out-of-pocket drug costs at $2,000 per year, according to the nonprofit Protect our Care.

“Trump’s first goal as president was to repeal the ACA, and even when he failed, he spent his presidency sabotaging it until the bitter end,” Brad Woodhouse, Protect Our Care’s executive director said in a statement. “The American people demand lower costs and better care – while Donald Trump is fighting for executives on Wall Street, Kamala Harris is fighting for hardworking families.”

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