If Donald Trump wins a second term, it would be nearly impossible to stop him from destroying the current health care system and putting millions of Americans health care at risk. We have just one year left to stop him — we can do it.
Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that he’d make health care “much less expensive,” provide “much better coverage,” to “take care of everybody.” That hasn’t happened.
Instead, Trump’s only made things worse. While in office, Trump has repeatedly attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and has even gone so far as to try to have the law overturned in court. The Tampa Bay Times reported that over the last two years Trump slashed the budget for health care navigators to assist those enrolling on the federal exchange. On September 10, Axios reported that the uninsured rate went up for the first time since the ACA was rolled out.
Throwing out the ACA has real consequences. Over 1.7 million Floridians used the ACA’s federal exchange to enroll in a health insurance plan last year — the most people from any single state. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported that 28 percent of non-elderly adult Floridians have a health condition that could get them denied health insurance or charged higher premiums without the ACA’s protections. And the Urban Institute reported that Florida could see the number of people uninsured increase by 1,560,000.
Nationwide, if Trump gets the Supreme Court to strict down the ACA, 21 million Americans could lose their health care.
Terrie Rizzo, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, called out Trump:
“Donald Trump isn’t trying to help Americans get access to health care, he is trying to gut the Affordable Care Act. If Trump cared about making health care better, he would not be trying to put the health care of millions at risk.”