During the vice presidential debate on Wednesday night between Vice President Mike Pence and California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris, Harris decided to frighten Americans about health care, claiming that if an American was ill and had a pre-existing condition or was young enough to be insured on their parents’ health insurance, the Trump-Pence administration was “coming for you.”
Harris ranted, “If you have a preexisting condition, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, they’re coming for you. If you love someone who has a pre-existing condition, they’re coming for you. If you are under the age of 26 on your parents’ coverage, they’re coming for you.”
Earlier in the debate, Pence had stated, “The difference here is President Trump and I trust the American people to make choices in the best interest of their health. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris consistently talk about mandates, and not just mandates with the Coronavirus, but a government takeover of healthcare, the Green New Deal, all government control. We’re about freedom and respecting the freedom of the American people.”
Just prior to her claim of the Trump administration “coming for you,” Harris claimed that the success of the economy pre-Covid-19 was due to the Obama-Biden administration, saying the “Trump-Pence administration wants to take credit when they rode the coattails of Joe Biden’s success for the economy that they had at the beginning of their term. Of course, now the economy is a complete disaster, but Joe Biden on the one hand did that. On the other hand, you have Donald Trump who has reigned over a recession that is being compared to the Great Depression.”
“On the one hand, you have Joe Biden who was responsible with President Barack Obama for the Affordable Care Act, which brought healthcare to over 20 million Americans and protected people with preexisting conditions,” she continued. “And what it also did is it saved those families who otherwise were going bankrupt because of hospital bills they could not afford. On the other hand, you have Donald Trump, who is in court right now, trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, which means that you will lose protections if you have preexisting conditions. If you have a preexisting condition, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, they’re coming for you. If you love someone who has a pre-existing condition they’re coming for you. If you are under the age of 26 on your parents’ coverage, they’re coming for you.
Pence fired back, “Well. I hope we have a chance to talk about healthcare because Obamacare was a disaster, and the American people remember it well.”
As The Hill reported in 2019, a Hill-Harris poll found that only 14% of respondents felt their health care costs had gone down because of Obamacare:
Few Americans believe their health care situation has been improved by key components of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a Hill-HarrisX poll released Thursday.
Across party lines, most registered voters contacted for the March 30-31 survey said major provisions of former President Obama’s signature health care law either had no real impact on them or had made things worse.
Forty-eight percent of respondents said the ACA had not impacted their monthly insurance premium costs, while 46 percent said their premiums were worse compared to before the law. Just 14 percent of respondents said they were better off.
When asked about the health care reform’s effect on co-pay fees, 41 percent said they were worse off, and 35 percent said they were not impacted. Only 13 percent said the ACA improved those costs.
Forty-one percent said their access to medical service providers is the same as it was before the ACA, while 16 percent said it is better. Thirty-four percent said things are worse in terms of access.