Tim Walz took JD Vance to task for his revisionist history during the vice presidential debate this Tuesday. Trump did not “salvage Obamare.” From day one in office, he did everything he could to kill it.
During the vice presidential debate on CBS against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Ohio senator echoed Trump’s own recent revisionism. But the assertion also served to remind voters that Democrats ultimately won the yearslong political fight over expanding access to health insurance: The Republican ticket no longer wants to repeal the 2010 law.
Trump “actually implemented some of these regulations when he was president of the United States,” Vance said Tuesday night. “And I think you can make a really good argument that it salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along. I think this is an important point about President Trump.
“When Obamacare was crushing under the weight of its own regulatory burden and health care costs, Donald Trump could have destroyed the program,” Vance added. “Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.”
But when Trump was president, repeal was a centerpiece of his agenda. In a dramatic Senate vote in 2017, Democrats and a handful of Republicans rejected his plan to repeal Obamacare. Then-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., cast the deciding vote by turning his thumb down with a theatrical flourish. A critic of Obamacare, McCain nonetheless concluded that the “skinny repeal” measure would leave Americans worse off than if Obamacare remained in place.
Walz noted that episode Tuesday night.
Trump “would have repealed [Obamacare] had it not been for the courage of John McCain,” Walz said.
Vance also went after the individual mandate in the ACA and thought he was somehow trapping Walz for being in support of it. Walz proceeded to give Vance a lesson in how insurance markets work in response.
WALZ: And the question about this about young people or whatever, that’s the individual mandate piece of this, and Republicans fought tooth and nail, saying, well, Americans should be free to do this. Well then what happens…
VANCE: Do you think the individual mandate is a good idea?
WALZ: I think the idea of making sure the risk pool is broad enough to cover everyone, that’s the only way insurance works. When it doesn’t, it collapses. You are asking pre-ACA, where we get people out, look, people know that they need to be on health care.
People expect it to be there, and when we are able to make it, and we are making it this way, when we incentivize people to be in the market, when we help people who might not be able to afford it get there, and we make sure then, when you get sick and old, it’s there for you.
Because I heard people say, well I don’t want to buy into Medicare, or whatever. Good luck buying health care once you get past 70. So look, the ACA works. We can continue to do better. Kamala Harris did that. The way she made everything better was negotiating those ten drugs on Medicare for the first time in American history.
Vance was really hoping to counter Walz with some more lies, but the moderators cut him off due to time and moved onto the next topic. Walz hitting him for kowtowing to the insurance companies and wanting to allow them to pick and choose who they cover was one of the better parts of the debate, especially since the moderators weren’t allowed to fact-check Vance’s constant lies.
