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President Joe Biden, his campaign team and Democrats in general have spent months hammering Donald Trump on health care, and as NBC News reported, the party is making new efforts to push the issue into the 2024 election spotlight.
President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign on Wednesday announced $14 million in new spending across battleground states while launching an ad hitting former President Donald Trump on health care. The spending includes seven figures that will target minority groups through TV, digital and radio ads this month, said the campaign, which is looking to capitalize on its early fundraising advantage over Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
In the new spot, viewers are shown footage of the former president vowing to “terminate” the Affordable Care Act, ahead of footage of Biden telling an audience, “Health care should be a basic right. Folks, he’s coming for your health care, and we’re not going to let that happen.”
Recent polling suggests health care isn’t one of the dominant issues of the election cycle, but sometimes the public conversation can change with some nudging.
“As we’re talking about the stakes, I think they could not be higher for Americans who rely on the Affordable Care Act,” Biden campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said this week on a call with reporters. “That’s a message we’ll be driving hard across the board throughout the month of May and into the summer.”
Fortunately for Democrats, Trump has provided them with plenty of rhetorical ammunition.
Circling back to our earlier coverage, during his White House tenure, the Republican not only talked about “terminating” the ACA, he actually tried to eliminate the health care reform law, seemingly indifferent to the adverse effects it would have on tens of millions of American families.
But after his 2020 defeat, Trump’s offensive against “Obamacare” didn’t exactly fade away. As recently as seven months ago, for example, the Republican whined that some GOP senators failed to help him “terminate” the ACA in 2017. “It was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!” Trump added.
A month later, the Republican posted a video to his social media platform vowing to “replace” the existing health care system, adding, “We would have had it terminated if were it not for John McCain and a couple of others, but that didn’t happen.”
Trump kept the offensive going in the months that followed.
In fairness, it’s worth noting for context that the presumptive GOP nominee has occasionally said recently that once he’s done tearing down the nation’s existing health care system, he’ll replace it with something he insists will be better, cheaper and more effective.
But for those keeping score, Trump has had nearly a decade to come up with such a plan, and so far, he’s failed spectacularly.
This, in turn, creates an uncomfortable question for voters: Are families willing to vote for a presidential candidate who’s eager to tear down the nation’s healthcare system and replace it with an alternative he doesn’t want to talk about?
If you’re concerned about your family’s health security, would you really want to take a dramatic risk based on the assurances of an accused felon who has a history of breaking promises?
This post updates our related earlier coverage.